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PERSONAL IDEALISM 



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PERSONAL IDEALISM 



PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS BY 
EIGHT MEMBERS OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 



EDITED BY 



HENRY STURT 



MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1902 

A U rights reserved 



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PREFACE 

This volume originated in the conversations and discus- 
sions of a group of friends drawn together primarily by 
their membership in the Oxford Philosophical Society. 
The Society was started in the spring of 1898, and 
among some of the most regular attendants at its meetings 
a certain sympathy of view soon declared itself. In the 
course of two years the trend of opinion had grown so 
definite as to suggest to me the project of a volume of 
essays. Among those who- seemed likely to contribute I 
circulated a programme which made it the object of our 
volume " to represent a tendency in contemporary thinking, 
to signalise one phase or aspect in the development of 
Oxford idealism." That tendency was summed up in a 
phrase which I thought I was originating at the time I 
wrote the programme, though it seems to have occurred 
independently to others. 1 It is the phrase we have chosen 
for our title, " Personal Idealism." For me our volume 
fulfils the purpose with which it was projected so far as it 
develops and defends the principle of personality. 

Personality, one would have supposed, ought never to 
have needed special advocacy in this self-assertive country of 
ours. And yet by some of the leading thinkers of our day 
it has been neglected ; while by others it has been bitterly 
attacked. What makes its vindication the more urgent is 

1 Prof. Howison uses it to characterise the metaphysical theory of his Limits 
of Evolution, published last year. 

V 



vi PERSONAL IDEALISM 

that attacks have come from two different sides. One 
adversary tells each of us : " You are a transitory resultant 
of physical processes" ; and the other: " You are an unreal 
appearance of the Absolute." Naturalism and Absolutism, 
antagonistic as they seem to be, combine in assuring us 
that personality is an illusion. 

Naturalism and Absolutism, then, are the adversaries 
against whom the personal idealist has to strive ; but the 
manner of the strife must be different in each case. Per- 
sonal Idealism is a development of the mode of thought 
which has dominated Oxford for the last thirty years ; it 
is not a renunciation of it. And thus it continues in the 
main the Oxford polemic against Naturalism. To it and 
to Naturalism there is no ground common, except that 
both appeal to experience to justify their interpretations 
of the world. Thus against this adversary the argument 
must take the form of showing that from naturalistic 
premises no tolerable interpretation of the cardinal facts 
of our experience can be made. If it be asked what are 
those cardinal facts, I should answer : Those which are 
essential to the conduct of our individual life and the 
maintenance of the social fabric. They are summarily 
recognised in the credo that we are free moral agents in a 
sense which cannot apply to what is merely natural. 
Round this formula of conviction are grouped the ques- 
tions debated with Naturalism in our volume. They are 
the reality of human freedom, the limitations of the evolu- 
tionary hypothesis, the validity of the moral valuation, 
and the justification of that working enthusiasm for ideals 
which Naturalism, fatalistic if it is to be logical, must 
deride as a generous illusion. If these crucial questions be 
decided in our favour, the system of Naturalism is con- 
demned. 

Accordingly, where Naturalism confronted us, we were 
not unfrequently obliged to take the aggressive and carry 



PREFACE vii 

the war far into the enemy's country. But in the other 
essays a different line of action has been taken. The 
Absolutist is a more insidious, perhaps more dangerous 
adversary, just because we seem to have more in common 
with him. He professes to agree with us in the funda- 
mental conviction that the universe is ultimately spiritual ; 
against the naturalist it was just this conviction which had 
to be vindicated. We decided, then, to meet the Absolu- 
tist with what may be called a rivalry of construction. 
Absolutism has been before the world for a century, more 
or less. It has put forth its account of knowledge, of 
morals, and of art ; and that account, suggestive though it 
is, has not satisfied the generality of thinking men. If the 
grounds of dissatisfaction be demanded, I can only give 
the apparently simple and hackneyed, but still fundamental 
answer, that Absolutism does not accord with the facts. 
Thus, instead of entering upon the intricate task of refuting 
Absolutism, we have felt free to adopt the more congenial 
plan of offering specimens of constructive work on a 
principle which does more justice to experience. Our 
essays are but specimens. They indicate lines of thought 
which could not be worked out fully in the space allowed. 
But they are extensive enough, let us hope, to enable the 
reader to judge whether their general line of interpretation 
is not more promising than that of Absolutism. 

It may be objected that we are wrong in assuming that 
Absolutism cannot be reconciled with the principle of per- 
sonality. In reply two points of incompatibility may be 
specified shortly; further particularity is impossible without 
a much fuller statement, more especially since Absolutism 
is not so much a definite system as an aggregate of 
tendencies without a universally acknowledged expositor. 
The two points in respect of which Absolutism tends 1 to 

1 I use a guarded phrase, because what follows is not entirely true of exponents 
of Absolutism so distinguished as Prof. Henry Jones and Prof. Royce. 



viii PERSONAL IDEALISM 

be most unsatisfactory are, first, its way of criticising human 
experience, not from the standpoint of human experience, 
but from the visionary and impracticable standpoint of 
an absolute experience ; and, secondly, its refusal to 
recognise adequately the volitional side of human nature. 
Both matters are dealt with in the essay on Error which 
stands first in the volume. There it is shown that 
error and truth are not dependent upon the Absolute ; in 
other words that we can know with certainty without 
knowing the absolute whole of Reality ; and that, if we 
err, it is by human criteria, not by a theory of the Absolute, 
that we measure the degree of our error. Further, in regard 
to volition, the same essay shows that error is relative, 
not to the content of knowledge only, but also to its 
intent, i.e., the intention of the agent in setting out upon 
his search for knowledge. The reader may be left to 
trace for himself the wider operation of these principles. 

In conclusion there is one feature in our essays to 
which I would venture to call attention as constituting 
what to my mind is the most valuable feature of their 
method ; that is, the frequency of their appeal to ex- 
perience. The current antithesis between a spiritual 
philosophy and empiricism is thoroughly mischievous. If 
personal life be what is best known and closest to us, 
surely the study of common experience will prove it so. 
' Empirical idealism ' is still something of a paradox ; I 
should like to see it regarded as a truism. 



H. S. 



CONTENTS 

ESSAY PAGE 

I. Error. By G. F. Stout, M.A., Wilde Reader in 

Mental Philosophy i 

II. Axioms as Postulates. By F. C. S. Schiller, M.A., 
Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Corpus Christi 
College ...... 47 

III. The Problem of Freedom in its Relation to 

Psychology. By W. R. Boyce Gibson, M.A., 
Queen's College, Lecturer in London University . 134 

IV. The Limits of Evolution. By G. E. Underhill, 

M.A., Fellow and Senior Tutor of Magdalen College 193 
V. Origin and Validity in Ethics. By R. R. 

Marett, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College . 221 
VI. Art and Personality. By Henry Sturt, M.A., 

Queen's College . . . . .288 

VII. The Future of Ethics : Effort or Abstention ? 
By F. W. Bussell, D.D., Fellow, Tutor, and Vice- 
Principal of Brasenose College . . . 336 
VIII. Personality, Human and Divine. By Hastings 

Rashdall, D.Litt, Fellow and Tutor of New College 369 

Note. — Each writer is responsible solely for his own essay. 



IX 



ERROR 1 
By G. F. Stout 

SYNOPSIS 

I. In Error, what is unreal seems to be thought of in the same way as the 
real is thought of when we truly know it. How is this possible ? As 
an essential preparation for answering this question we must first deal 
with another. Do other modes- of thinking exist besides those which 
can be properly said to be either true or false ? There are two such 
modes, (i) Indeterminate or problematic thinking. (2) Thinking of 
mere appearance without affirming it to be real. 
2 and 3. To think indeterminately is to think of something as one of a group 
of alternatives, without deciding which. The indeterminateness lies in 
not deciding which ; and so far as the indeterminateness extends there 
is neither truth nor error. Whatever is thus indeterminately thought 
of belongs to the Intent of consciousness. The term Content should 
be reserved for what is determinately presented. 

In cognitive process, indeterminate thinking takes the form of questioning 
as a mental attitude essentially analogous to questioning. Interrogative 
thinking is the way we think of something when we are interested in 
knowing it, but do not yet know it either truly or falsely. Its distinc- 
tive characteristic is that the decision between alternatives is sought 
for in the independent reality of the total object in which we are 
interested. This object is regarded as having a determinate constitution 
of its own, independently of what we may think about it. We are 
active in cognitive process only in compelling the object to reveal its 
nature. The activity is experimental ; its result is determined for us 
and not by us. 

In the play of fancy, on the contrary, we do not seek to conform our 
thought to the predetermined constitution of our object. We select 
alternatives as we please, and to this extent make the object instead of 
adapting ourselves to its independent nature. 

1 Throughout this essay I am deeply indebted to the criticisms and sugges- 
tions of Professor Cook Wilson. In particular, I have substantially adopted his 
account of the distinction between abstract terms and adjectives, in place of a less 
satisfactory view of my own. 

B 



2 G. F. STOUT i 

4. Besides indeterminate thinking there is yet another mode of thinking 
which is neither true nor false. It consists in thinking of mere appear- 
ance without taking it for real. This happens, for example, in the play of 
fancy. Mere appearance consists in those features of an object of con- 
sciousness which are due merely to the special conditions, psychological 
and psychophysical, of its presentation, and do not therefore belong to 
its independent reality. 

5 and 6. Error occurs when what is merely apparent, appears to belong to 
an independent reality in the same way as its other real features. 
The conditions under which this occurs may be divided under two 
heads. (1) Confusion. (2) Ignorance and inadvertence. Ignorance 
or inadvertence are present in every error, Confusion only in some. 

7. It follows from the very nature of error that it cannot exist unless the 

mind is dealing with something independently real. Hence, some truth 
is presupposed in every error as its necessary condition. 

8. There are limits to the possibility of error. There can be no error 

unless in relation to a corresponding reality, which is an object of 
thought for him who is deceived. Further, this reality must be capable 
of being thought of without the qualification which is said to be illusory. 
Hence, among other results, we may affirm that abstract objects cannot 
be illusory unless they contain an internal discrepancy. For, they are 
considered merely for themselves, and not as the adjectives of any other 
reality in relation to which they can be illusory. So far as the abstract 
object is merely a selected feature of actual existence, it is not merely 
not illusory ; it is real. It is something concerning which we can think 
truly or falsely. 

9. But the constructive activity of the mind variously transforms and modifies 

the abstract object, in ways which may have no counterpart in the 
actual. To this extent, the abstract object may be relatively unreal. 
None the less, such mental constructions, so far as they belong to 
scientific method, are experimental in their character and purpose. 
They serve to elicit the real nature of the object as an actual feature 
of actual existence. Thus abstract thinking, even when it is construc- 
tive, gives rise to judgments concerning -what is real. These judgments 
may at least be free from the error of ignorance. For the mind may 
require no other data to operate on in answering its questions except 
those that are already contained in the formulation of them. Errors 
of confusion and inadvertence may still occur. But even these are 
avoidable by simplifying the problems raised. Thus, abstract thinking 
yields a body of certain knowledge, 
to. Certainty, then, is attainable. It exists when a question is made to 
answer itself, so as to render doubt meaningless. When this is so 
the real is present to consciousness, as the illusory can never be. 



I. The General Nature of Error 

§ 1. The question raised in the present essay is funda- 
mentally the same as that discussed in Plato's Thecetetus. 
The Thecztetus may be described as a dialogue on Theory 
of Knowledge. But the central problem did not take the 
same shape for Plato as it does for most modern epistemo- 
logists since the time of Descartes. What the moderns 



i ERROR 3 

trouble themselves about is the nature and possibility of 
knowledge in general. How, they ask, can a particular 
individual be in such relation to a reality which transcends 
and includes his own existence as to know it. Can he 
know it otherwise than through the affections of his own 
consciousness which it produces ? If it can only be known 
in this way, can it be said to be known at all ? Are not 
his own mental states the only existences which are really 
cognised ? Questions of this sort occupy modern philo- 
sophers, and they have given rise to the Critique of Pure 
Reason, among other results. But I cannot see any 
evidence that in this form they gave much trouble to 
Plato. The nature and possibility 6f knowledge would 
probably not have constituted a problem for him at all, 
had it not been for the existence of error. That we can 
know was for him a matter of course, and it was also a 
matter of course that we may be ignorant. But he was 
puzzled by the conception of something intermediate be- 
tween knowing and not knowing. If an object is present 
to consciousness, it is pro tanto known ; if it is not present 
to consciousness, it is not known. But in so far as it is 
known there can be no error, because the knowledge 
merely consists in its presence to consciousness. And 
again, in so far as it is not known there can be no 
error, for what is not known is not present to conscious- 
ness : it is to consciousness as if it were non-existent, 
and therefore the conscious subject as such cannot 
even make a mistake concerning it. Hence we cannot 
be in error either in respect to what we know or to 
what we don't know, and there seems to be no third 
alternative. 

This is Plato's problem, and ours is fundamentally akin 
to it. For with him we must assert that, in knowing, the 
object known must be somehow thought of, and in this 
sense present to consciousness. The grand lesson of the 
history of Philosophy is just that all attempts to explain 
knowledge on any other assumption tumble to pieces in 
ruinous incoherence, and that from the nature of the case 
they must do so. The only form such attempts can take 



4 G. F. STOUT i 

is to treat knowledge simply as a case of resemblance, 
conformity, or causality, between something we are 
conscious of and something we are not conscious of. 
What we are conscious of we may be said to know 
immediately. But the something we are not conscious 
of, how can that be known. The only possible pretence 
of an answer is that the knowing of it is wholly constituted 
by its somehow resembling, or corresponding to or causing 
what is actually present to consciousness. But this 
pretended answer in all its forms is utterly indefensible. 
The supposed conformity, resemblance, or causality is 
nothing to us unless we are in some manner aware of it. 
If I am to think of A as resembling B or as corresponding 
to it or as causing it, I must think of B as well as of A. 
Both A and B must be in some way present to my 
consciousness. 

The very distinction of truth and error involves this. 
Truth is frequently defined as the agreement, and error 
as the disagreement, of thought with reality. But this 
definition, taken barely as it stands, is defective and mis- 
leading. It omits to state that the reality with which thought 
is to agree or disagree must itself be thought of, and that 
the thinker must intend to think of it as it is. Otherwise 
there can be neither truth nor error. I may imagine a 
dragon, and it may be a fact that dragons do not actually 
exist. But if I do not intend to think of something 
which actually exists, I am not deceived. And, on the 
same supposition, the actual existence of dragons exactly 
resembling what I imagine would not make my thought 
true. It would be a curious coincidence and nothing 
more. So in general, if we assume a sort of inner circle 
of presented objects, and an outside circle of unpresented 
realities, we may suppose that the presented objects are 
similar or dissimilar to the real existences, or that in some 
other way they correspond or fail to correspond to them. 
But the resemblance or correspondence would not be truth 
and the dissimilarity or non-correspondence would not be 
error. Even to have a chance of making a mistake we 
must think of something real and we must intend to think 



i ERROR 5 

of it as it really is. The mistake always consists in 
investing it, contrary to our intention, with features which 
do not really belong to it. And just here lies the essential 
problem. For these illusory features seem to be present 
to cognitive consciousness in the same manner as the real 
features are. 1 How then is it possible that they should 
be unreal. This is our problem, and evidently it is closely 
akin to that raised by Plato. But there is a difference 
and the difference is important. Our difficulty arises from 
the fact that when we are in error what is unreal appears 
to be present to consciousness in the same manner as 
what is real is presented when we truly know. While 
the erroneous belief is actually being held, the illusory 
object seems in no way to differ for the conscious 
subject from a real object. The distinction only arises 
when the conscious subject has discovered his mistake, 
and then the error as such has ceased to exist. The 
essential point is not merely that both the illusory and 
the real features are presented, but also that they are 
both presented as real and both believed to be real. 
It is not enough to say that they are both really 
appearances. We must add that they are both apparent 
realities. 

Now the question did not take this shape for Plato. 
The difficulty which he emphasises is not that what is 
unreal may be present to consciousness in the same way 
as what is real. The stumbling-block for him is rather 
that it is present to consciousness at all. For what is 
present to consciousness must, according to him, be known ; 
and if it is known, how can it be unreal ? On the other 
hand if it is not present to consciousness, it is simply 
unknown. Thus there would seem to be no room for 
that something intermediate between knowing and being 
ignorant which is called error. 

Before proceeding to deal with our own special 
difficulty it will be well to examine the Platonic assump- 

1 It will be found in the sequel that I admit cases where the conditions which 
make error possible are absent, and in these cases the real is present to conscious- 
ness in a different manner from that in which the unreal is capable of being 
presented. 



M 



6 G. F. STOUT i 

tion that whatever is in any way present to consciousness, 
whatever is in any way thought of, is known — unless 
indeed error be an exception. Besides knowing and 
being mistaken it is also possible merely to be aware of 
a mere appearance which not being taken for reality is 
therefore not mistaken for reality. This is a point to 
which we shall recur at a later stage. For the present I 
wish to draw attention to another mode of thinking which 
is neither knowing, nor mere appearance, nor error. 

II. Intent and Content 

§ 2. Cognitive process involves a transition or at- 
tempted transition from ignorance to knowledge, and where 
we are trying to make this transition there may be an 
intermediate state which is neither knowledge, nor 
ignorance, nor error. We may be interested in knowing 
what we do not as yet know. But we cannot be 
interested in knowing what we do not think of at all. 
In what way then do we think of anything before we 
know it or appear to know it ? I reply that it is an 
object of interrogative or quasi-interrogative consciousness. 
It is thought of as being one and only a certain one of a 
series or group of alternatives, though which it is we leave 
undecided. 

Sometimes the question is quite definite. The 
alternatives are all separately formulated. Thus we may 
ask — Is this triangle right-angled, acute, or obtuse? In 
putting the question we seek for only a certain one of the 
three alternatives, but until the answer is found we do 
not know which of them we are in search of; we do not 
know it although we think of it. 

Sometimes the question is only partially definite ; only 
some alternatives or perhaps only one of them is 
separately formulated. Thus we may ask — Has he gone 
to London, or where else ? 

Sometimes again, the question is indefinite. What is 
sought is merely thought of as belonging to a group or 
series of alternatives of a certain kind, which are not 



i ERROR 7 

separately formulated. Suppose that I am watching the , 
movements of a bird. My mental attitude is essentially ^ 
of the interrogative type even though I shape no definite 
question. I am virtually asking, — what will the bird do 
next ? The bird may do this, that, or the other, and I 
may not formulate the alternatives. But whatever 
changes in its position or posture may actually occur, are 
for that very reason what I am interested in knowing 
before I know them. I am looking for the determinate 
while it is as yet undetermined for me. Or, to take an 
illustration of a different kind. I have to find the 
number which results from multiplying 1947 by 413. 
At the outset I do not know what the number is, and yet 
there is a sense in which I may be said to think of it. 
I think of it determinately as the number which is to be 
obtained by a certain process. So far I may be said to 
know about it. But the knowledge about it is not 
knowledge of what it is. Yet this is what I aim at 
knowing, and therefore I must in some sense think of it. 
I think of it indeterminately. I think of it as being 'a 
certain one of a series of alternative numbers, which I do 
not separately formulate. 

So far I have considered only cases in which know- 
ledge is sought before it is found, so that the transition 
from the indeterminate to the determinate comes as the 
answer to a question definite or indefinite. But there are 
instances in which this is not so. There are instances 
in which the answer seems to forestall the question. A 
picture falls while I am writing. I was not previously 
thinking of the picture at all, but of something quite 
different. My attention is only drawn to the picture 
by its fall. But the picture then becomes distinguished 
as subject from its fall as predicate. This means that 
the picture is thought of as it might have existed for 
consciousness before the fall took place. It is regarded 
as relatively undetermined and the predicate as a deter- 
mination of it. The fall of the picture comes before 
consciousness as if it were the answer to a question. 1 

1 Of course if we suppose that the noise of the fall first awakens 



8 G. F. STOUT i 

)h. The relation of subject and predicate is essentially- 
analogous to what it would have been if we had pre- 
viously been watching to see what would happen to the 
picture. 

In this and similar instances, there is an actual dis- 
tinction of subject and predicate essentially analogous to 
that of question and answer. But in a very large part 
of our cognitive experience no such distinction is actually 
made. I look, let us say, at my book-shelves, and I am 
aware of the books as being on the shelves and of the 
shelves as containing the books. But I do not formulate 
verbally or otherwise the propositions : — " The books are 
on the shelves," or " The shelves contain the books." 
Neither the books nor the shelves are regarded as re- 
latively indeterminate and as receiving fresh determination 
in the fact that one of them stands in a certain relation to 
the other. Again, I may meet a friend and begin to talk 
to him on some political topic, proceeding on the assump- 
tion that he agrees with me. I find that he does not, 
and only then do I wake up to the fact that I have been 
making an assumption. And it is only at this point that 
the distinction of subject and predicate emerges. Such 
latent or unformulated presuppositions are constantly 
present in our mental life. They are constantly involved 
in the putting of questions. They are constantly involved 
in the conception of the subjects to which we attach pre- 
dicates, and also in the conception of the predicates. 
The nature, function, and varieties of this kind of cog- 
nitive consciousness we cannot here discuss. It is suffi- 
cient for our purpose to note that all such cognitions are 
capable of being translated into the subject -predicate 
form, without loss or distortion of meaning. Further, this 
translation is necessary if we are to submit them to 
logical examination. In particular, we cannot otherwise 
deal with any question relating to their truth or falsity. 
The disjunction, true or false, does not present itself to 

the question — What is falling ? before we think of the picture, the fall is subject 
and the picture predicate. But I do not think that this account of the matter 
always holds good in such cases. 



i ERROR 9 

consciousness until we distinguish subject and predicate. 
In the absence of this distinction there is only uncon- 
scious presupposing or assuming. But when the dis- 
tinction is made it is essentially analogous to that of 
question and answer. 

So far as our thought is indeterminate there can be 
neither truth nor error. But it must be remembered that 
our thought is never purely indeterminate. A question 
always limits the range of alternatives within which its 
answer is sought ; and the question itself may be infected 
with error. A man for instance may set out to find the 
square root of two. In the formulation of the question 
he leaves it undetermined what special numerical value 
the root of two has. But he assumes that it has some 
determinate numerical value. To this extent his question 
is infected with error, and it can have no real answer 
unless it is reshaped. If he seems to himself to find an 
answer, he does but commit a further error. What he 
thinks he wants to know, is not what he really wants to 
know. Hence in finding what he really wants to know 
he must alter the form of his question. 

This leads me to make a suggestion in terminology. 
The term 'content of thought' is perpetually being used 
with perplexing vagueness. I propose to restrict its 
application. We cannot, without doing violence to 
language, say that the indeterminate, as such, is part of 
the content of thought. For it is precisely what the 
thought does not contain, but only intends to contain. 
On the contrary, we can say with perfect propriety that it 
belongs to the intent of the thought. It is what the 
conscious subject intends when its selective interest 
singles out this or that object. 

From this point of view we can deal advantageously 
with a number of logical and epistemological problems. 
For instance it throws light on the proposed division of 
propositions into analytic and synthetic. Whatever can 
be regarded as a judgment, whether expressed in words 
or not, is and must be both analytic and synthetic. It is 
synthetic as regards content and analytic as regards intent. 



io G. F. STOUT i 

While I am watching a bird, whatever movement it may- 
make next belongs to the intent of my thought, even before 
it occurs. It is what I intend to observe. But the special 
change of posture or position does not enter into the con- 
tent of my thought until it actually takes place under my 
eyes. Hence each step in the process is synthetic as re- 
gards content though analytic as regards intent. This holds 
generally for all predication which is not mere tautology. 
If the predicate did not belong to the intent of its subject, 
there would be nothing to connect it with this special 
subject rather than with any other. If it already formed 
part of the content there would be no advance and there- 
fore no predication at all. 

From the same point of view, we may regard error as 
being directly or indirectly a discrepancy between the 
intent and content of cognitive consciousness. 

Sometimes the discrepancy lies in a latent assumption. 
The initial question which determines the intent of thought 
may itself be infected with error, as in the example of a 
man setting out to find the square root of two. In such 
cases it would seem that a man cannot reach truth 
unless he finds something which he does not seek. 
But the reason is that there is already a discrepancy 
between intent and content in the very formulation 
of his initial question. The man is interested in 
formulating an answerable question, and he fails to 
do so. Similarly wherever error occurs there is always 
an express or implied discrepancy between intent and 
content. 

It follows that truth and error are essentially relative 
to the interest of the subject. To put a question seriously 
is to want to know the answer. A person cannot be right 
or wrong without reference to some interest or purpose. 
A man wanders about a town which is quite unfamiliar 
without any definite aim except to pass the time. Just 
in so far as he has no definite aim he cannot go astray. 
He is equally right whether he takes a turn which leads 
to the market-place or one which leads to the park. If 
he wants to amuse himself by sight-seeing it may be a 



i ERROR 1 1 

mistake for him to go in this direction rather than in that. 
But if he does not care for sight-seeing, he cannot commit 
this error. On the other hand if his business demands 
that he should reach the market-place by a certain time, 
it may be a definite blunder for him to take the turn 
which leads to the park. In this example the interest is 
primarily practical and the blunder is a practical blunder. 
But the same principle holds good for all Tightness and 
wrongness even in matters which appear purely theoretical. 
Our thought can be true or false only in relation to the 
object which we mean or intend. And we mean or 
intend that object because we are, from whatever motive, 
interested in it rather than in other things. If a man 
says that the sun rises and sets, he may refer only to the 
behaviour of the visible appearance of the sun, as seen 
from the earth's surface. In that case you do not convict 
him of error when you remind him that it is the earth 
which moves and not the sun. For you are referring to 
something in which he was not interested when he made 
the statement. Error is defeat. We mean to do one 
thing and we actually do another. So far as the error is 
merely theoretical what we mean to do is to think of a. 
certain thing as it is, and what we actually do is to think 
of it as it is not. 

This implies that the thing we think of has a constitu- 
tion of its own independent of our thinking — a constitution 
to which our thinking may or may not conform. A 
question is only possible on the assumption that it has 
an answer predetermined by the nature of the object of 
inquiry. It is this feature which marks off the interroga- 
tive consciousness peculiar to cognitive process from the 
form of indeterminate thinking which is found in the play 
of fancy. While the play of fancy is proceeding, its 
object is at any moment only partially determined in 
consciousness, and each step in advance consists in fixing 
on one alternative to the exclusion of others. But the 
intent of imaginative thinking is different from that of 
cognitive, and consequently the decision between com- 
peting alternatives is otherwise made. An examination 



12 G. F. STOUT i 

of this difference will carry us a step farther in our 
inquiry. 

III. Imaginative and Cognitive Process 

S 3. Imaginary objects as such are creatures of our own 
making. When we make up a fairy-tale for a child the 
resulting object of consciousness is merely the work of 
the mind, and it is not taken by us for anything else. 
In the development of intent into content, of indeterminate 
into determinate thinking, the decision among alternatives 
is made merely as we please, whatever be our motive. 
It depends purely on subjective selection so far as the 
process is imaginative. 

It is necessary to add this saving clause. For no 
imaginative process is merely imaginative. Even in the 
wildest play of fancy, the range of subjective selection is 
restricted by limiting conditions. Gnomes must not be 
made to fly, or giants to live in flower-cups. Thackeray's 
freedom of selection in composing Vanity Fair was 
circumscribed by his purpose of giving a faithful repre- 
sentation of certain phases of human life. In so far as 
such limiting conditions operate, the mental attitude is 
not merely imaginative. It is imaginative only in so far 
as the limiting conditions still leave open a free field for 
the loose play of subjective selection. 

This freedom of subjective selection is absent in 
cognitive process. Instead of deciding between alterna- 
tives according to his own good pleasure, the conscious 
subject seeks to have a decision imposed upon him 
independently of his wish or will. It is true that 
cognitive process may include a varied play of sub- 
jective selection. But there is one thing which must 
not be determined by subjective selection. It is the 
deciding which among a group of alternative qualifica- 
tions is to be ascribed to the object we are interested 
in knowing. 

In cognitive process as such we are active merely in 
order that we may be passive. Our activity is successful 



i ERROR 13 

only in so far as its result is determined for us and not 
by us. 

In this sense we may say that the work of the mind 
when its interest is cognitive has an experimental character. 
What is ordinarily called an experiment is a typical case 
of this mental attitude. A chemist applies a test to a 
substance. The application of the test is his own doing. 
But the result does not depend on him : he must simply 
await it. Yet he was active only in order to obtain this 
result. He was active that he might enable himself to 
be passive. He was active in order to give the object an 
opportunity of manifesting its own independent nature. 
His activity essentially consists in the shaping of a 
question so as to wrest an answer from the object of 
inquiry. In all cognitive process the mental attitude is 
essentially analogous. Suppose that I am interested in 
knowing whether any number of terms in the series 
1 +2 + 4 +^, etc., have for their sum the number 2. I 
may proceed by actually adding. This is a mental 
experiment, but it turns out to be unsuccessful. It 
does not transform my initial question into a shape in 
which it wrests its own answer from its object. By 
adding any given number of terms I find that the sum is 
less than two. But the doubt always remains whether 
by taking more terms I may not reach a different result. 
Under this mode of treatment my object refuses to mani- 
fest its nature so as to answer my question. I fail to 
obtain an answer by waiting for data which I have not 
got — by waiting till some number of terms shall present 
itself having 2 for their sum. Accordingly I re- 
sort to another form of experiment. I appeal to ex- 
perience a priori, instead of experience a posteriori. 
Instead of looking for data which I have not got, I try 
to obtain an answer by manipulating the data which I 
already possess in the very conception of the series as 
such, and of the number 2. I fix attention on the form 
of serial transition, and I inquire whether this is capable 
of yielding a term such as will make 2 when it is 
added to the sum of preceding terms. I find that 



i 4 G. F. STOUT i 

such a term must be equal to the term that precedes 
it, and that according to the law of the series each 
term is the half of that which precedes it. Hence 
no number of terms can have 2 as their sum. My 
experiment is successful. It translates my question 
into a shape in which it compels an answer from its 
object. 

Suppose again that I am verifying the statement that 
two straight lines cannot enclose a space. I conceive 
two lines as straight, ignoring all else but their being 
lines and their being straight. I then consider the 
varying changes of relative position of which they are 
capable, and I find by trial that only certain general 
kinds of variation are possible. If I think of them as 
not meeting at all, they refuse to enclose a space. The 
same is true when they are thought of as meeting at one 
point only. But if they meet at more than one point 
they insist on coinciding at all points. This result of my 
experiment does not depend on my activity ; it is deter- 
mined for me by the nature of the object on which I 
operate, by the constitution of space and of straight 
lines. 

It will be seen that I have included under the term 
experiment two very different groups of cases. To the 
first group belong such instances as the application of a 
chemical test. Their distinctive character is that an 
answer to the question raised cannot be obtained merely 
by operating on the data which are already presupposed 
in putting the question itself. When I am watching to 
see what a bird will do next, the decision does not come 
merely from a consideration of what I already know 
about the bird. The decision is given by a posteriori 
experience. On the other hand, if I want to know 
whether two straight lines can enclose a space I need no 
data except lines, straightness, and space as such. I can 
shape my question by mentally operating on these data 
so that it answers itself. The decision is given by a 
priori experience. But both results obtained a priori and 
those obtained a postei'iori are equally due to an experi- 



i ERROR 1 5 

mental process, to an activity that exists in order that it 
may be determined by its object. 

IV. Mere Appearance and Reality 

§ 4. All error consists in taking for real what is mere 
appearance. In order to solve the problem of error we 
must therefore discover the meaning of this distinction 
between mere appearance and reality. We are now in a 
position to take this step. We have a clue in the 
foregoing discussion of the nature of the imaginary object 
as such. The imaginary object as such is unreal and we 
see quite clearly wherein its unreality consists. It is 
unreal inasmuch as its imaginary features as such have 
no being independently of the psychical process by which 
they come to be presented to the individual consciousness. 
They are merely the work of the mind, merely the product 
of subjective selection and. they are therefore mere 
appearances. But though they are mere appearances, 
they are not therefore illusory or deceptive. They are 
not deceptive, because they are not taken for real. 
While the purely imaginative attitude is maintained, 
they are not taken either for real or unreal. The question 
does not arise, because in imagination as such we are not 
interested in the constitution of an object as independent 
of the process by which we come to apprehend it. 1 On 
the other hand when the question is raised whether what 
we merely imagine has this independent being, we commit 
no error if we refuse to affirm that it has. Mere appear- 
ance is not error so long as we abstain from confusing it 
with reality. 

The imaginary object is only one case of mere appear- 
ance. It is the case in which the nature of what is 
presented to consciousness is determined merely by the 
psychical process of subjective selection. But there is 
always mere appearance when and so far as the nature of 

1 The fact that the object is merely imaginary is not attended to. We do not 
contrast it as unreal with something else as real. If we are externally reminded 
of its unreality, the flow of fancy is disturbed. The flow of fancy is also disturbed 
if we are called on to believe that our fancies are facts. The whole question of 
reality or unreality is foreign to the imaginative attitude. 



1 6 G. F. STOUT i 

a presented object is determined merely by the psycho- 
logical conditions of its presentation, whatever these may 
be. There is always mere appearance when and so far 
as a presented object has features due merely to the 
special conditions of the flow of individual consciousness 
as one particular existence among others, connected with 
a particular organism and affected by varying circum- 
stances of time and place. 

In ordinary sense-perception the thing perceived is 
constantly presented under modifications due to the 
varying conditions of the perceptual process. But what 
we are interested in knowing is the thing so far as it has 
a constitution of its own independent of these conditions. 
Hence whatever qualifications of the object are recognised 
as having their source merely in the conditions of its 
presentation are pro tanto contrasted with its reality as 
being merely its appearances. 

An object looked at through a microscope is presented 
as much larger and as containing far more detail than when 
seen by the naked eye. But the thing itself remains the 
same size and contains just the same amount and kind of 
detail. The difference is due merely to conditions affect- 
ing the process of perception, and it is therefore merely 
apparent. On the other hand, the details which become 
visible when we use the microscope, and which were 
previously invisible, are ascribed to the real object. The 
parts of the object being viewed under uniform perceptual 
conditions, whatever differences are presented must be due 
to it, and not to the conditions of its presentation. The 
visible extension of a surface increases or diminishes 
according as I approach or recede from it, and the visible 
configuration of things varies according to the point of 
view from which I look at them. But these changes 
being merely due to the varying position of my body 
and its parts are regarded as mere appearances so far 
as they are noted at all. 1 If I close my eyes or look 

1 To a large extent they pass unnoted. We have acquired the habit of 
ignoring them. So far as this is the case, they are not apprehended as appear- 
ances of the thing perceived. 



i ERROR 17 

away, objects, previously seen, disappear from view. But 
this being due merely to the closing of my eyes or my 
turning them in another direction is no real change in 
the things. They are really just as they would have been 
if I had continued to look at them. 

It is important to notice that in cases of this kind the 
mere appearance is not to be identified with any actual 
sense-presentation. The appearance is due to a certain 
interpretation of the sensible content of perception, 
suggested by previous experience. When we see a stick 
partially immersed in a pool, the visual presentation 
is such as to suggest a bend in the stick itself. Even 
while we are denying that the stick itself is bent, we are 
thinking of a bend in it. Otherwise the act of denial 
would be impossible. This being understood, it is easy 
to see that all cases of mere appearance are in principle 
analogous to the examples drawn from sense-perception. 
Mere appearance exists wherever anything is thought of 
as having a character which does not belong to it inde- 
pendently of the psychical process by which it is appre- 
hended. Unless this character is affirmed of its inde- 
pendent reality, there is no error. If a man denies that 
two lines are commensurable, or if he questions whether 
they are so or not, their commensurableness must have 
been suggested to his mind. If the lines are really 
incommensurable, this suggestion is mere appearance. 
Should he affirm them to be commensurable he is in 
error. 

We now pass to two important points of principle. 
In the first place it should be clearly understood that 
mere appearance is a qualification of the object appre- 
hended and not of the mind which apprehends it. There 
is here a complication due to an ambiguity in the term, 
appearance. It may mean either the presenting of a 
certain appearance or the appearance presented. The last 
sense is that in which I have hitherto used the word in 
speaking of mere appearance. A stick, partly immersed 
in a pool, appears bent in the sense that it presents the 
appearance of being bent. The bend is the appearance 

C 



1 8 G. F. STOUT i 

presented. Now the presenting of this appearance is an 
adjective of the stick as an independent reality. The 
stick which is really straight really presents the appearance 
of being bent. It does not merely appear to appear 
bent : it really appears so. Given the psychological and 
psychophysical conditions of its presentation, it is part of 
its independently real nature that it should wear this 
appearance. But the apparent bend is not a qualifica- 
tion of the independently real stick. It is a qualification 
of a total object constituted by the real stick so far as it 
is present to consciousness and also by certain other 
presented features which are due merely to the special 
conditions under which the real stick is apprehended. 
Mere appearance is in no sense an adjective of the cogni- 
tive subject. The person to whom a straight staff appears 
as bent when it is partially dipped in a pool is not himself 
apparently bent on that account, either bodily or mentally. 
He who imagines a golden mountain is not himself the 
appearance of a golden mountain : his psychical processes 
are not apparently golden or mountainous. The existence 
of mere appearance is not that of a psychical fact or event 
except in the special case where the real object thought 
of happens to be itself of a psychical nature. 

In the second place, the distinction between mere 
appearance and reality is relative to the special object we 
are interested in. In ordinary sense-perception we are 
interested in the objects perceived so far as they have a 
constitution independent of the variable conditions bodily 
and mental of the perceptual process. Contrast this with 
the special case of a beginner learning to draw from 
models. For him what in ordinary sense-perception is 
mere appearance becomes the reality. He has to repro- 
duce merely what the object looks like from the point of 
view at which he sees it. And he finds this a hard task. 
The visual presentation is apt to be apprehended by him 
as having qualifications which do not belong to its own 
independent constitution, but are merely due to the 
conditions of his own psychical processes in relation to it. 
His established habit of attending only to physical 



i ERROR 19 

magnitude and configuration leads him to think of 
physical fact even in attempting to think only of the 
sensory presentation. Thus a child in drawing the profile 
of a face will put in two eyes. But the physical fact so 
far as it is unseen does not belong to the reality of the 
visual presentation. It is therefore mere appearance 
relatively to this reality, and in so far as it is confused 
with this reality, it is not only mere appearance but error. 

V. Special Conditions of Error 

§ 5. Having defined what we mean by mere appear- 
ance we have now only one more step to take in order to 
account for error. We have to show how the mere appear- 
ance of anything comes to be confused with its reality. 

It is clear from the previous discussion that there can 
be neither truth nor falsehood except in so far as the 
mind is dealing with an object which has a constitution 
predetermined independently of the psychical process 
by which it is cognised. 

Such logical puzzles as the Litigiosus and Crocodilus 
involve an attempt to affirm or deny something which 
is not really predetermined independently of the affirma- 
tion or denial of it. In the Litigiosus the judgment to 
be formed is supposed to be part of the reality to which 
thought must adjust itself in forming it. Euathlus was 
a pupil of Protagoras in Rhetoric. He paid half the fee 
demanded by his teacher before receiving lessons and 
agreed to pay the remainder after his first lawsuit if 
he won it. His first lawsuit was one in which Protagoras 
sued him for the money. The jury found themselves in 
what appeared a hopeless perplexity. It seemed as if 
they could not affirm either side to be in the right without 
putting that side in the wrong. The difficulty arose from 
the attempt to conform their decision to a determination 
of the real which had no existence independently of the 
decision itself. Apart from the judgment which they 
were endeavouring to form, the reality was indeterminate 
and it could not therefore determine their thought in the 



20 G. F. STOUT i 

process of judging. The Crocodilus illustrates the same 
principle in a different way. A crocodile had seized a 
child, but promised the mother that if she told him truly 
whether or not he was going to give it back, he would 
restore it. There would be no difficulty here if the 
mother's guess were supposed to refer to an intention 
which the crocodile had already formed. But he is 
assumed to hold himself free to regulate his conduct 
according to what she may happen to say, and so to 
falsify her statement at will. There is therefore no 
predetermined reality to which her thought can conform 
or fail to conform ; which alternative is real, is not pre- 
determined independently of her own affirmation of one 
of them. Hence an essential condition of either true or 
false judgment is wanting. One consequence of the 
general principle is that a proposition cannot contain any 
statement concerning its own truth or falsity. Before the 
proposition is made in one sense or another its own 
truth or falsity is not a predetermined fact to which 
thought can adjust itself. Thus if a man says, " The 
statement I am now making is false," he is not making 
a statement at all. On the other hand, he would be 
speaking significantly and truly if he said " The statement 
I am now making contains nine words." For he can 
count each word after determining to use it. His pre- 
cedent determination to use the word is an independent 
fact which he does not make in the act of affirming it. 

For error to exist the mind must work in such a way 
as to defeat its own purpose. Its interest must lie in 
conforming its thought to the predetermined constitution 
of some real object. It must be endeavouring to think 
of this as it is independently of the psychological 
conditions of the thinking process itself. And yet, in the 
very attempt to do so, it must qualify its object by 
features which are merely due to such psychological 
conditions. 

I cannot pretend to give anything approaching a full 
analysis of the various special circumstances which give 
rise to this confusion of appearance and reality. But 



i ERROR 21 

the following indication will serve to illustrate the general 
principle involved. 

Errors may be roughly classified under two heads 
which we may designate (i) as errors of confusion, 
and (2) as errors of ignorance, inadvertence, and forget- 
fulness. All errors involve a confusion of appearance 
and reality. But this confusion is the error itself, not 
a condition determining its occurrence. When we speak 
of an error of confusion, we mean an error which not 
only is a confusion, but has its source in a confusion. 
Again, all errors involve some ignorance, inadvertence, 
or forgetfulness. Whenever any one makes a mistake, 
there is something unknown or unheeded which would 
have saved him from error if he had known and taken 
account of it. But we can distinguish between cases in 
which ignorance or inadvertence or forgetfulness are the 
sole or the main source of the erroneousness of a belief, 
and those in which another and a positive condition plays 
a prominent part. This other positive condition is what 
I call confusion. I shall begin by explaining wherein 
it consists, and illustrate it by typical examples. 



(1) Errors of Confusion 

§ 6. There is a confusion wherever our cognitive judg- 
ment is determined by something else than the precise 
object which we are interested in knowing. We mean to 
wrest a decision from just this object concerning which the 
question is raised ; but owing to psychological conditions, 
other factors intervene without our noticing their opera- 
tion and determine, or contribute to determine, our 
thought. Optical illusions supply many examples. I 
must content myself with one very simple illustration 
of this kind. 



/ 



In the above figure there are two straight lines, a b 
and ef\ the part c d is marked off on a b, and the 



22 G. F. STOUT i 

part g h on e f. c d is really equal to g h. But 
most persons on a cursory glance would judge it to be 
longer. The reason is that though we mean to compare 
only the absolute length of c d with the absolute length 
of g h, yet without our knowing it, other factors help 
to determine the result. These are the relative length 
of c d as compared with a b, and the relative length 
of g h as compared with e f. This example is typical. 
In all such instances we mean our judgment to depend 
on comparison of two magnitudes as presented to the 
eye. But these magnitudes are presented in more or 
less intimate union with other items so as to form with 
these a group which the attention naturally apprehends 
as a whole. Hence there is a difficulty in mentally 
isolating the magnitudes themselves from the contexts 
in which they occur so as to compare these magnitudes 
only. We seek to be determined by the nature of the 
object which we are interested in knowing, but we escape 
our own notice in being determined by something else. 
This is confusion. 

Another most prolific source of confusion is found in 
pre- formed association. All associations are in them- 
selves facts of the individual mind and not attributes of 
anything else. If the idea of smoke always calls up in 
my mind the idea of fire as its source, this is something 
which is true of me, and not of the fire or the smoke as 
independent realities. It might seem from this that 
whenever our judgment of truth and falsehood is deter- 
mined by association, we commit a confusion. But this 
is not so ; for it is the function of association to record 
the results of past experience ; and when the results 
recorded are strictly relevant to the object we are 
interested in knowing, and to the special question at 
issue, there is no confusion. 

The association between 12x12 and equality to 
144 registers the result of previous multiplication of 12 
by 1 2. There is therefore no confusion in allowing it 
to determine our cognitive judgment. But the associative 
mechanism may become deranged so that 12x12 calls 



i ERROR 23 

up 154 instead of 144. In that case to rely on it as a 
record involves an error of confusion. 

It often happens that certain connections of ideas 
are insistently and persistently obtruded on consciousness 
owing to associations which have not been formed 
through experiences relevant to the question at issue. 
So long and so far as their irrelevance is unknown or 
unheeded, the irrelevant association determines the course 
of our thought in the same way as the relevant. Take 
by way of illustration an argument recently used by an 
earth-flattener. The earth must be flat ; otherwise the 
water in the Suez Canal would flow out at both ends. 
The associations operative in this case, are those due to 
experience of spherical bodies situated on the earth's 
surface. Whenever the earth-flattener thinks of the 
earth as a globe, inveterate custom drives him to think 
of it as he has been used to think of all the other globes, 
of which he has had experience. But the question at 
issue relates to the earth as distinguished from bodies 
on its surface. Hence a fallacy of confusion. 

One effect of repeated advertisements such as those of 
Beecham's pills, covering several columns of a newspaper, 
is to produce this kind of illusion. Self-praise is no 
recommendation. But self-praise skilfully and obtrusively 
reiterated may suffice to produce an association of ideas 
which influences belief. 1 

Errors due to ambiguity of words come under this 
head. A word is associated with diverse though allied 
meanings, and, as we go on using it in what aims at being 
continuous thought, one meaning insensibly substitutes 
itself for another. Being unaware of the shifting of our 
object from A to A f we go on assuming that what we 
have found to be true of A is true of A'. We begin for 
instance by talking of opponents of government, meaning 

1 Many persons have a prejudice against advertisements. I share this 
prejudice myself. And yet the obtrusive vividness and persistent reiteration of 
some of them does now and then produce in me a momentary tendency to believe 
which might easily become an actual belief if I were not on my guard. Allitera- 
tive and rhetorical contrast often help to stamp in the association. " Pink pills 
for pale people " is a good instance. Of course the whole effect of advertisement 
cannot be explained in this way. 



24 G. F. STOUT i 

advocates of anarchy, and we proceed to apply what 
we have said of these to opponents of some existing 
government. 

" Bias " is a source of confusion distinct from irrelevant 
association, though the two frequently co-operate to 
produce error. Bias exists so far as there is a tendency 
to accept one answer to a question rather than another 
because this answer obtrudes itself on consciousness 
through its connection with the emotions, sentiments, 
desires, etc. of the subject or in one word, because it 
is specially interesting. The interest is most frequently 
agreeable. But it may also be disagreeable. In return- 
ing home after the discovery of the famous footprint, 
Robinson Crusoe's terror caused him to mistake every 
bush and tree, and to fancy every stump at a distance 
to be a man. To say that a man's mind is intensely 
occupied in escaping or guarding against danger, is 
equivalent to saying that he is intensely interested in 
finding out what the danger is and where it lies. Hence 
he will be on the alert for signs and indications of peril. 
He will therefore attend to features of his environment 
which would otherwise have passed unnoted, and he 
will neglect others which he would otherwise have 
attended to. Thus fear may influence belief by determin- 
ing what data are, or are not, taken into account. By 
excluding relevant data it may give rise to error of 
inadvertence. But besides this the data which fear 
selects are also emphasised by it. They obtrude them- 
selves with an insistent vivacity proportioned to the 
intensity of the emotion. This insistent vivacity directly 
contributes to determine belief and becomes a source of 
error of confusion. In view of current statements this 
last point needs to be argued. 

The prevailing view appears to be that errors due to 
bias are merely errors of inadvertence. Dr. Ward, for 
example, strongly takes up this position. " Emotion and 
desire," he remarks, " are frequent indirect causes of 
subjective certainty, in so far as they determine the 
constituents of consciousness at the moment — pack the 



i ERROR 25 

jury or suborn the witnesses as it were. But the ground 
of certainty is in all cases some quality or some relation 
of these presentations inter se. In a sense, therefore, the 
ground of all certainty is objective — in the sense, that 
is, of being something at least directly and immediately 
determined for the subject and not by him." l 

What Ward's argument really proves is that subjective 
bias cannot be recognised by the subject himself as a 
ground or reason for believing. It does not follow that 
it may not directly influence belief through confusion. 
In cases of confusion we seek control proceeding from the 
nature of our object, and we find our thought determined 
by something else which we fail to distinguish from the 
objective control we are in search of. Now there seems 
to be no reason why subjective interest should not, in this 
way, mask itself as objective control. Connection with 
emotion and desire may give to certain ideas a persistent 
obtrusiveness which is not always adequately traced to its 
source. But this persistent obtrusiveness, when and so far 
as it is not traced to its source in emotion and desire, must 
appear as if it arose from the nature of the object. It 
will thus appear to the subject as something which 
determines him and is not determined by him. This 
confusion may assume three forms. In the first place 
there are instances in which it is very difficult to dis- 
cover any other cause of belief except subjective bias. 
The person who holds the belief cannot assign any reason 
for it except that he feels it to be true. Sometimes, no 
doubt, there may be in such cases an objective ground 
which the believer finds it impossible to express or 
indicate to others. But there are instances in which the 
sole or the main factor seems to be subjective bias. 
What is believed obtrudes itself upon consciousness vividly 
and persistently because of its peculiar kind and degree 
of interest so that it is difficult to frame the idea of 
alternative possibilities save in a comparatively faint, 
imperfect, and intermittent way. 

The second class of cases is less problematical. I refer 

1 Article on "Psychology," in Ency. Brit. p. 83. 



26 G. F. STOUT i 

to instances in which there are relevant reasons for belief 
but reasons which are inadequate to account for the actual 
degree of assurance, apart from the co-operation of bias. 
A regards B with hatred and jealousy so that the mere 
imagination of B's disgrace or ruin has a fascination for 
him. Something occurs which would produce in an 
impartial person a suspicion that B had been behaving in 
a disgraceful way. A at once believes the worst with 
unwavering decision and tenacity. It may be that the 
impartial person, who only entertains a suspicion, has just 
as restricted a view of the evidence as A. The restriction 
may be due to ignorance or indifference in his case, and 
mental preoccupation in A's. But for both the relevant 
evidence may be virtually the same. The difference is 
that in A's mind it is reinforced and sustained by 
subjective bias which he does not sufficiently allow for. 
In a third class of instances irrelevant association co- 
operates with subjective bias. This is perhaps the most 
fertile source of superstitions and of those savage beliefs 
of which superstitions are survivals. Take for example 
the tendency which some uneducated persons and even 
some who are educated find irresistible, to think of their 
bodies as still sentient after death. Sit tibi terra levis 
is more than a metaphor. It points back to the belief 
that the weight of the superincumbent earth actually 
distresses the corpse. It is a Mahometan superstition 
that the believing dead suffer when the unhallowed foot of 
a Christian treads on their graves. In the old Norse 
legends to lay hands on the treasure hidden in the tomb 
of a chief is to run a serious risk of rousing its owner from 
his long sleep to defend his possessions. Perhaps there 
are few people who look forward to their own funeral 
without figuring themselves to be present at it not only 
in body but in mind. This whole point of view is in part 
due to a firmly established association arising from the 
intimate connection of mind and body during life. But 
besides this we must also take into account the gruesome 
fascination of such ideas. Their vivid and absorbing 
interest makes it difficult to sret rid of them, and this 



i ERROR 27 

persistent obtrusiveness in so far as it is not traced to its 
source in psychological conditions contributes to 
determine belief in their reality. 

(2) Errors of Ignorance and Inadvertence 

We turn now from the error of confusion to the error 
of mere ignorance, which must be taken to include all 
forgetfulness or inadvertence. As I have before pointed 
out, all error involves some ignorance or inadvertence ; 
but in the case of confusion there is also some other 
positive ground of the erroneousness of the belief. An 
irrelevant condition operates as if it were relevant. It 
would not do so, if we were fully and persistently aware of 
its presence and influence, and to this extent the error of 
confusion is one of ignorance or inadvertence ; but the 
ignorance and inadvertence is not the sole cause of error. 
There is also the undetected influence of the irrelevant 
factor determining the course of thought. In the error 
of mere ignorance or inadvertence, on the other hand, the 
sole ground of the erroneousness of the belief lies in the 
insufficiency of the data, at the time when it is formed. 
But here we must guard against a misapprehension. The 
error is not identical with the ignorance or inadvertence. 
It is a belief having a positive content of its own. Nor 
is it correct to say even that the determining cause of 
this belief lies in the ignorance or inadvertence. Mere 
negation or privation cannot be the sole ground of any 
positive result. What directly determines belief is the 
data which are presented, not anything which is un- 
presented, and we must add to these as another 
positive condition the urgency of the interest which 
demands a decision and will not permit of a suspense of 
judgment. It is these factors which are operative in 
producing the belief. Ignorance and inadvertence 
account only for its erroneousness. In all cognitive 
process we seek to be determined by the nature of our 
object. But if the object is only partially known, what is 
unknown may be relevant so that if it had been known 



28 G. F. STOUT i 

and heeded another decision would have been imposed 
on us. 

As an example of error due to mere ignorance, I may 
refer to a personal experience of my own. Some time 
ago I set out to visit a friend who, as I assumed, was 
living in Furnival's Inn. I found on arrival that the 
whole building had been pulled down. My error in this 
case was not due to any confusion. The evidence on 
which I was relying was all relevant and such as I still 
continue to trust on similar occasions. I went wrong 
simply because certain events had been occurring since 
my previous visit to Furnival's Inn without my knowing 
of them. 

Inadvertence is not sharply divided from mere 
ignorance. It includes all failure to bring to conscious- 
ness knowledge, already acquired and capable of recall, at 
the time when it is required for determining our decision. 
It may also be taken to include other failures to take into 
account knowledge which would have been immediately 
and easily accessible if we had turned our attention in the 
right direction. Mill gives many examples under the 
head " Fallacies of Non-observation." From him I quote 
the following : — " John Wesley, while he commemorates 
the triumph of sulphur and supplication over his bodily 
infirmities, forgets to appreciate the resuscitating influence 
of four months' repose from his apostolic labours." 
Wesley knew that he had taken rest and also that rest 
has commonly a recuperative effect in such cases. His 
failure lay in omitting to take these facts into account 
owing to subjective bias, as an amateur physician with 
crochets and as a religious enthusiast. 

So far as error is traceable to ignorance or inadvertence, 
it is perhaps abstractedly possible to conceive that it 
might have been avoided by an absolute suspense of 
judgment. I might have refused to count on the con- 
tinued existence of Furnival's Inn, or even on the chance 
of it, on the ground that I did not know all that had 
happened in relation to it, since I saw it last. But such 
suspense of judgment cannot be uncompromisingly main- 



i ERROR 29 

tained as a general attitude throughout our whole mental 
life. It would be equivalent to a refusal to live at all. 
Any one who carried out the principle consistently would 
not say " this is a chair " when he saw one. He would 
rather say, " This is what, if my memory serves me right, 
I am accustomed to regard as the visual appearance of a 
chair." In thus cutting off the chance of error we should 
at the same time cut off the chance of truth. In order 
to advance either in theory or practice, we must presume — 
bet on our partial knowledge. We must take the risk 
due to an unexplored remainder of conditions which may 
be relevant to the issue we have to decide on. But there 
is another alternative. A mental attitude is possible 
intermediate between absolute suspense of judgment and 
undoubting acceptance of a proposition as true. We 
may judge that the balance of evidence is in favour of 
the proposition. Instead of unreservedly expecting to 
find Furnival's Inn, I might have said to myself that it 
was a hundred to one I should find it. So far as this 
proposition has a practical significance as a guide to 
action it can only mean that I should be right in relying 
on similar evidence in 99 cases out of 100. But such an 
attitude does not really evade the possibility of error 
arising from ignorance and inadvertence. For (1) we are 
liable to go wrong even in the estimate of probabilities. 
There are, for example, vulgar errors of this kind which 
mathematical theory corrects. (2) In determining the 
probability of this or that proposition, we proceed on the 
basis of a preformed body of beliefs which are themselves 
liable to be erroneous. In particular, we are apt to 
assume undoubtingly that our view of competing alterna- 
tive is virtually exhaustive, when it is really not so. But 
we cannot be always sifting these latent presuppositions to 
the bottom. If we constantly endeavoured to do so in a 
thorough-going way, it would be impossible to meet the 
emergencies of practical life or even to make effective 
progress in knowledge. It is a psychological impossibility 
to assume and maintain a dubitative attitude at every 
point where ignorance or inadvertence are capable of 



3<d G. F. STOUT i 

leading us astray. We have not time for this, and in 
any case the complexity and difficulty of the task 
would baffle our most strenuous efforts. (3) Continued 
attention to the possibility of a judgment being 
wrong would for the most part hamper us in the 
use of it. In believing, we commit ourselves to act on 
our belief, to adapt our conduct and our thought 
to what is believed as being real. In so doing we must 
more and more tend to drop demurrers and reservations. 
I cannot every time I return to my house after absence 
keep steadily before my mind that it may have been 
burnt down without my knowing it. When we have 
committed ourselves to a belief so as to conform our 
thought and conduct to it, it becomes more and more 
interwoven with the whole system of our mental life. 
Our interest in its consequences and implications diverts 
attention from considerations which point to its possible 
or probable erroneousness and at the same time this same 
interest forms a subjective bias of growing strength which 
is likely to lead to an error of confusion. 

Absolute suspense of judgment, as we have defined it, 
would exclude even a judgment of relative probability. 
There is, however, a different meaning which attaches in 
ordinary language to the phrase " absolute " or " complete " 
suspense of judgment. It is frequently taken to mean 
that the balance of probability for and against a proposi- 
tion is regarded as even. This kind of suspense does not 
prevent us from acting as if the proposition were true or 
false. But neither does it exclude error. For the 
judgment that probabilities are equally balanced is itself 
liable to error, like other judgments of probability. 
Besides this, such a judgment is not by itself sufficient to 
determine action. It must be supplemented by other 
beliefs of a more positive kind, and in regard to these the 
possibility of error again emerges.' A man may regard it 
as an even chance whether a certain operation will kill or 
cure him. He may, none the less, decide to undergo it, 
so that his practical decision is the same as if he had no 
doubt of a favourable result. But the practical decision 



i ERROR 3 i 

is founded on another belief, the belief that the advantage 
of a favourable issue is greater than the disadvantage of 
an unfavourable issue. Again a general may think the 
chances even, of the enemy coming this way or that to 
attack him. Merely on this basis he could not in- 
telligently make provision for one contingency in 
preference to the other. In order that he may do so, he 
must be influenced by other beliefs of a more determinate 
kind. He may, for instance, believe that if the enemy 
comes one way, it is useless to attempt resistance, and 
that if he comes the other, the attack can be repelled. 
On these assumptions he will proceed as if he un- 
doubtingly accepted the second alternative. Our result, 
then is — (i) That absolute suspense of judgment excluding 
even the judgment of probability is equivalent to suspense 
of action. (2) That the relative suspense of judgment 
which consists in affirming even chances, does not suffice 
to determine action unless it is supplemented by other 
beliefs in which one alternative is preferred to others. 
Hence it appears that practical decision involves theoretical 
decision, and that we must constantly risk error by 
presuming on partial knowledge if we are to live at all. 

Here we must close this sketch of the special conditions 
of error. The topic in itself is almost inexhaustible. But 
what has been said may serve to illustrate our general 
position. 

This position is simply that error is a special case of 
mere appearance. It is mere appearance which also 
appears to be real. The essence of all mere appearance 
is that it is a feature of an object which belongs to it 
only in virtue of the psychical conditions under which it is 
apprehended. In the case of error the psychical con- 
ditions so operate that mere appearance is not recognised 
as such, but is on the contrary presented as if it were real. 

VI. No Error is Pure Error 

§ 7. The rest of this essay will be occupied with some 
corollaries which flow from our general position. 



32 G. F. STOUT i 

One of these is that no error is pure error. However 
much we may be deceived, the total object of our thinking 
or perceiving consciousness cannot be entirely illusory. 

This does not mean that error is only truth in the 
making, or that truth can always be obtained by some 
adjustment, compromise, combination, or higher synthesis 
of diverging views. When I say that error is never pure 
error I am not adopting the attitude of the landlord of 
' The Rainbow ' in Silas Marner. " Come, come," said the 
landlord, " a joke's a joke. We must give and take. 
You're both right and you're both wrong as I say. I 
agree with Mr. Macey here, as there's two opinions ; 
and if mine was asked I should say they're both right. 
Tookey's right and Winthrop's right, and they've only got 
to split the difference and make themselves even." It is 
no such comfortable philosophy that I am advocating. 
On the contrary, I admit and maintain that in the 
ordinary acceptation of the word a man may be and 
frequently is " completely wrong," and also that he may 
be and sometimes, though not so frequently, is completely 
right. But I would point out that such phrases are used 
in ordinary parlance with a certain tacit and unconscious 
reservation. " Completely wrong " means completely 
wrong so far as relates to the point at issue — to the 
question which alone possesses interest for the parties 
concerned. If a man meets me some morning and tells 
me, in good faith, that Balliol College has been burned 
down during the night, I say, with justice, that he has been 
completely deceived, when it turns out that there has been 
no fire, and that Balliol College is just as it was. If my 
informant were to defend himself from the charge of 
complete error by alleging that after all Balliol College 
really exists, and that fires really take place, I should call 
his answer irrelevant and stupid. Yet the answer would 
be true enough, and it would only be stupid because of its 
irrelevance. It would be irrelevant because the existence 
of Balliol and the occurence of fires were facts taken for 
granted as a matter of course. There was never any 
question concerning them. When I said that he was 



i ERROR 33 

entirely deceived, I meant that he was so deceived on the 
only point of interest which could lead him to make the 
statement at all, or me to listen to it. 

Thus in ordinary intercourse we may be completely 
right in saying that a man is completely wrong. But 
this is possible only because the statement is made with a 
tacit and unconscious reservation. It is made with 
reference not to the total object present to the mind of 
the person who is deceived, but with reference to that 
part of it which alone interests us *at the moment. 
But when we are concerned with the philosophical theory 
of error, what is uninteresting in ordinary intercourse 
becomes of primary importance. We must consider the 
total object, and when we do so, we are compelled to 
recognise that some truth is implied in every error. For 
otherwise the word " error " loses all meaning. 

The unreality of what is unreal lies wholly in its 
contrast with what is real. It must be thought of as 
qualifying some real being. Its unreality is relative not 
to any real being whatever taken at random, but only to 
that real being to which it is referred as a character or 
attribute. 

It is essential to the possibility of error that both the 
real being and its unreal qualification must be present to 
consciousness. I may imagine an animal and describe it 
as imagined. Another person who is acquainted with 
some actual animal more or less resembling what I have 
imagined may regard my description as referring to this. 
From his point of view he may show that parts of my 
description are unreal. But he does not convict me of 
error unless he can show that I intended to describe the 
animal which he has in mind. 

It does not follow that the explicit subject of an 
erroneous judgment must itself be real and not illusory. 
It may be illusory in relation to a more comprehensive 
subject, which is real. If I am told that Cleopolis, the 
capital of fairy-land, was burnt down last night, I reply 
that Cleopolis and fairy - land never had any actual 
existence. Here I condemn both subject and predicate 

D 



34 G. F. STOUT i 

as illusory. But in doing so I regard the subject as itself 
a predicate of a more comprehensive subject which really 
exists. I presuppose a certain kind of reality which I 
call actual existence. This consists in a system of things 
and events continuously connected in an assignable way 
with my own existence at the present moment, and 
including what happened last night. When I say that 
Cleopolis never actually existed, I deny that it ever 
formed a partial feature of this reality. 

What has been said of the subject of an erroneous 
judgment applies also to the predicate. The predicate 
cannot be entirely unreal. This follows from the fact that 
the distinction between subject and predicate is relative to 
the point of view of the person judging, and fluctuates 
accordingly. Whether I say " this horse is black " or 
" this black thing is a horse " depends on the point of 
departure of my thought and not on the nature of its 
object. If I begin by regarding the object as a horse 
and then proceed to qualify it as black, " black " is 
predicate and horse subject. If I begin thinking of the 
object as a black thing and then proceed to qualify it as 
being a horse, horse is predicate and "black thing" is 
subject. 

Considerations of this kind have led some writers to 
regard error as ultimately consisting merely in a mis- 
placement of predicates. Subject is real and predicate is 
real ; we err only in putting them together in the wrong 
way. This manner of speaking seems to me misleading so 
far as it suggests that the illusory object, as such, having 
no positive content of its own, can be resolved without 
remainder into constituents which are not illusory but real. 
The fallacy lies in the tacit assumption that A as predicate 
of B is just the same A as when it is predicated of C, D, 
E, etc. This is not ^so. In predicating A of 5 we 
think of A as related in a specific way to the other 
constituents and attributes of A, But this relatedness of 
B is as much part of the positive content of our thought 
as whatever may be left of B when we abstract from this 
relatedness. Besides this, B when it is thought of as 



i ERROR 35 

existing in these relations is thought of as adjusted to 
them and modified accordingly. In Goldsmith's poem of 
the mad dog, the people make a mistake in saying that 
the man would die. 

The man recovered of the bite ; 

The dog it was that died. \ 

Here it is assumed that the man is real, the dog is real 
and the death is real. It would seem therefore that the 
error lay merely in a wrong arrangement — in coupling 
death with the man instead of with the dog. But in fact 
the death of a man is something different in its nature 
and implications from the death of a dog, and a man 
dying is something different from a dog dying. Perhaps 
if the man had died, the world would have lost a church- 
warden. But this could not be part of the meaning of 
the death of the dog. 

VII. Limits to the Possibility of Error 

§ 8. If the essential conditions of error are absent, what 
is taken for real must be real. From this point of view 
we can prescribe limits to the possibility of error. A 
belief cannot be erroneous unless it ascribes to a real 
existence, as such, some qualification which does not 
belong to it. The real existence must itself be present 
to consciousness, and the subject must mean it to be 
qualified by the features which are said to be illusory. 
Thus, when an illusion is spoken of, we have a right to 
inquire what the reality is in relation to which it is an 
illusion. We have a right to insist that this reality 
must be thought of by the subject who is deceived. We 
have also a right to insist that it must be capable of 
being conceived without the feature or features which 
are said to be illusory. Otherwise there would be a 
circle. 

Now there are cases in which no such reality is 
assignable, and it is consequently meaningless to speak 
of error. I believe in the totality of being, and it is 



36 G. F. STOUT i 

nonsense to say that I may be deceived. For there is 
no more comprehensive reality of which the totality of 
being can be conceived as a partial feature or aspect. 
Whatever point there may be in the ontological argument 
for the existence of God lies in this. Again, I believe 
that my consciousness exists, and my belief cannot be 
illusory. For it cannot be illusory unless I regard my 
consciousness as a qualification of some reality which is 
not so qualified. Now whatever this reality is supposed 
to be, it must be a reality which is present to my con- 
sciousness when I commit the error. In other words, 
we cannot think of any reality to contrast with illusion 
which does not include the very feature that is alleged 
to be illusory. 

A more interesting illustration is supplied by the 
objects of abstract thought. 

The object signified by an abstract term is not 
regarded as an adjective of anything else. In sub- 
stituting for an adjective the corresponding abstract 
noun we leave out of count adjectival reference and 
treat the object of our thought only as a substantive. 
This does not mean that we cease to regard it as an 
attribute ; for all abstract objects are essentially attributes 
and must be recognised as such. " Adjectival reference " 
does not merely consist in being aware that an attribute 
is an attribute. The distinctive function of adjectives is 
the attribution of an attribute to a thing. Their specific 
office is to express the connection of a certain attribute 
with whatever other attributes the thing may possess. 
Unless the thing is expressly considered as possessing 
other attributes, the adjectival reference loses all signifi- 
cance. On the contrary, an attribute abstractly con- 
sidered is considered by itself: the fact that the things 
which it qualifies possess other attributes is regarded as 
irrelevant to the purpose of our thought. Things are 
referred to only in so far as they may possess the attribute 
in which we are interested, to the neglect of their other 
features. 

The addition of such phrases as qua, or " as such," 



i ERROR 37 

to an adjective always annuls the adjectival reference and 
substitutes for it the abstract point of view. When I say 
" white things," I include in the intent of my thought 
whatever other attributes may belong to the things besides 
whiteness. Hence in passing from intent to content, I 
can affirm that " white things are tangible." When I say 
" white things as such, or qua white," I exclude from the 
intent of my thought the other attributes of white things, 
though I do not of course deny their existence. Hence 
I cannot say that " white things as such, or qua white, are 
tangible." In like manner, we cannot say that " whiteness 
is tangible." For, " whiteness " is equivalent to white 
things as such, or qua white. 

If this account of the abstract object is correct, such an 
object cannot be illusory unless it is internally incoherent. 
For illusion exists only if a qualification is ascribed to 
something to which it does not belong. But an attribute 
abstractly considered is regarded merely as an attribute 
of whatever may happen to possess it. Whiteness is 
regarded only as an attribute of whatever things are 
white. But white things must be white. There is only 
one conceivable way in which the abstract object can be 
unreal. It may be unreal because by its own intrinsic 
nature it is incapable of existing. But this can be the 
case only when it is internally incoherent. When it is 
internally incoherent, it is illusory, because it contains 
illusion within itself, apart from reference to anything 
else. 1 

The concept of a solid figure bounded by twelve squares 
is unreal in this manner. For the nature of solid figures, 
abstractedly considered, is such as to exclude the qualifica- 
tion attributed to it. Similarly any abstract object is 
illusory if one of its constituents is thought to be a 
possible or necessary qualification of another which it 

1 Just as adjectival reference may be annulled by the phrases "as such," or 
qua, so abstraction may be annulled by making the abstract object a subject 
of a judgment in which it is affirmed to be an attribute of something. For its 
connection with other attributes of the thing essentially belongs to the import 
of such a judgment. The judgment is possible because the fact of the abstract 
object being an attribute is one of its own essential adjectives. When we say 
that it is an " attribute of," we merely give this adjective a specific determination. 



38 G. F. STOUT i 

does not so qualify. I speak only of possible or necessary, 
not of actual connection, because the question of actuality 
involves an adjectival reference beyond the content of the 
abstract object itself. When we say that a solid figure is 
not actually bounded by twelve squares, we mean that 
nothing actually exists, combining the attributes of a solid 
figure and of being bounded by twelve squares. But 
this in itself would not make the abstract object illusory : 
for in its abstractedness it is not intended as the adjective 
of anything else. 

Assuming internal coherence it seems clear that the 
abstract object cannot be illusory. But is it real ? and if 
so in what sense ? I answer that it is real if it is possible to 
make a mistake or even to conceive a mistake concerning 
it. It is real, if it is an object with which our thought 
may agree or disagree. This seems to me the only 
relevant use of the term reality in theory of Knowledge, 
and more especially in theory of Error. 

It may be urged that the truth or error which has an 
abstraction for its object is only hypothetical or conditional, 
resting in an assumption. Now, it is becoming a custom 
with some writers to use such words as " hypothetical " or 
" conditional " with perplexing vagueness. In the present 
case the meaning seems very obscure. Certainly truth 
and falsehood relating to an abstraction presuppose that 
it is just this abstract object which we intend and nothing 
else. But how can this make the truth or error itself 
hypothetical or conditional ? I affirm that the sky is blue 
and some one tells me that my statement is hypothetical 
because it can only be true or false on the condition that 
I really mean the sky and not, let us say, a piece of coal, 
or the Christian religion. This is so plainly nonsense 
that it seems futile to waste words over it. 1 

But is not abstract thought unreal, because it takes 
something to be self-subsistent which is not so ? I 
answer that abstract thought does nothing of the kind. 
It neither affirms nor denies the adjectival relations of the 
abstract object, but simply attempts to ignore them and 

1 This point is further considered below. Cf. p. 45. 



i ERROR 39 

to deal with whatever is then left to think about. In 
some cases, there may, perhaps, be nothing left and the 
experiment fails altogether. In others, there may be very 
little left and the experiment, though successful, is un- 
fruitful. In yet others, the result may be the opening out 
of a wide and rich field for thought, and then the experi- 
ment is both successful and fruitful. 

If we ask why in some cases the experiment proves 
fruitful in consequences and in others not so, the answer 
must be looked for in the intrinsic nature of the subject- 
matter. The essential requisite is a relational system 
such that given certain relations others are necessarily 
determined without reference to further data. Some 
important developments in this direction depend on serial 
order. The subject-matter exhibits what Herbart used 
to call a Reihen-form or complex of Reihen-formen. In 
ultimate analysis there is serial order wherever the rela- 
tion of betweenness or intermediacy (Herbart's Zwischen) 
is found. A number lies between numbers in a numerical 
series, a position in space between other positions, a part 
or a moment of time between other parts or moments of 
time, a musical note of a certain pitch between other 
notes higher and lower than it. The more complex and 
systematic is this serial connection including serial inter- 
connection and correspondence of series, the more wide 
and fruitful is the field for abstract thinking. 

VIII. Abstract Thinking 

§ 9. Abstraction may be regarded as a means of 
eliminating the conditions of the error of ignorance. By 
abstraction we can so select our object that each step of 
cognitive process shall proceed merely from the given 
data to the exclusion of unexplored conditions so that 
the judgment depends purely on experience a priori. 
Take such a judgment as 74-3 = 10. Here equality to 
10 is and is meant to be something which merely depends 
on the nature of 7 and of 3 and on the result of the 
process of adding. For this reason the judgment is 



40 G. F. STOUT i 

called necessary. It does not therefore follow that it 
must be true, but only that its truth or falsehood depends 
on the known data and on nothing else. Hence, if it is 
true, it is necessarily true, and if it is false, it is neces- 
sarily false. Only one condition of error is excluded by 
abstraction : error will not be due to ignorance and con- 
sequent presumption on partial knowledge. None the 
less inadvertence and confusion may still lead to mistakes. 
But even these sources of illusion may disappear when the 
data from which we start are sufficiently simple. Thus, 
abstract thinking leads to a large body of knowledge which 
may be regarded as certain. 

It may be said that abstract thinking plays tricks 
with its abstract object. It does not merely fasten on 
certain features of the actual world and consider their 
intrinsic nature, to the disregard of all else. It transforms 
the object of its selective attention and gives it forms and 
relations which have not been found in the actual world 
and perhaps may never have actual existence. The 
process of mathematical definition which is the very life- 
blood of the science consists mainly in constructions of 
this kind. The perfect fluid or the perfect circle of the 
mathematician are typical examples. 

At the first blush, it would seem that in such construc- 
tions we are leaving the real world for figments of our 
own making. But this is not so. All such construction 
is in its essential import an experimental activity. In it 
we are active only in order that we may be passive. We 
operate on the object only in order that we may give it 
an opportunity of manifesting its own independent nature. 
And the object always is or ought to be some actual 
feature of concrete existence. The constructive process 
has two main functions. It may either be (i) a means 
of fixing and defining the abstract object in its abstract- 
ness, or (2) a way of developing its nature. Constructions 
of the first kind are merely instruments of selective 
attention — vehicles of abstraction. They enable us to 
represent the abstract object in such a way that we can 
deal with it conveniently and effectively. The conception 



i ERROR 41 

of a perfect fluid is an excellent example of this procedure. 
Fluidity actually exists in the concrete inasmuch as fluid 
substances actually exist. But the mathematician cannot 
investigate fluidity effectively under the special conditions 
of its existence in the particular fluids known to him, 
such as water. For all these fluids are only more or less 
fluid. They are also more or less viscous, and this intro- 
duces a complication which he is unable to disentangle. 
To meet this difficulty he frames the conception of a 
perfect fluid. In studying the perfect fluid, he investigates 
fluidity without reference to the complications arising 
from the partial viscosity of known fluids. When the 
conception is once formed, the perfect fluid manifests an 
independent nature of its own which thought does not 
make but finds. And whatever may be found to be true 
of it is true of all particular fluids in so far as they are 
fluid. It holds good of fluids as such. The body of 
judgments thus formed expresses the nature of fluidity, 
and fluidity is an actual feature of the concrete world. 
Geometrical space is a construction of a similar kind. 
The geometer, as such, is interested merely in the nature 
of space and spatial configuration. His only reason for 
referring to the contents of space is that the conception 
of figure involves demarcation of one portion of space 
from another by some difference of content. Otherwise, 
he has no concern with the particular things which are 
extended in space or with the physical conditions of their 
existence. Accordingly, he fixes and formulates his 
abstract object by framing the conception of a space in 
which the distribution of contents is to be limited by 
spatial conditions, and these only. This conception enables 
him to represent his abstract object in such a way that he 
can deal with it effectively, unhampered by irrelevancies. 

In the second kind of construction, we develop the 
nature of our abstract object. We begin by distinguish- 
ing some general feature of the concrete world which is 
initially presented to us in certain particular forms. But 
as soon as we consider this feature abstractly, we discover 
that in its own intrinsic nature it is capable of other 



42 G. F. STOUT i 

determinations which have not been ascertained to exist 
in the concrete. Reality belongs to such constructions 
inasmuch as they express the real nature of a real feature 
of concrete existence. The determinations which we 
ascribe to the abstract object are not figments of our own. 
They are so founded in the nature of our object as to be 
necessarily possible. But it is only to this extent that 
they claim to be real. Geometrical construction furnishes 
a familiar example. The term figure, as ordinarily used, 
implies demarcation ; it implies the bounding off of one 
portion of extension from another by some difference in 
the character of the extended contents. Now it may be 
doubted * whether in the physical world or in our own 
mental imagery extended contents are ever so arranged 
that their boundaries form perfectly straight lines, or 
exactly equal lines, or perfect circles, or perfect spheres. 
None the less these conceptions express the actual nature 
of space, and to this extent they have an indisputable 
claim to be regarded as real. If we consider the distribu- 
tion of the contents of space as conditioned only by the 
nature of space, it must be possible for adjoining surfaces 
to bound each other so as to form a perfectly straight 
line ; and the same holds good for other perfect figures. 
To understand this we must note that all demarcated 
figure presupposes what we may call undemarcated figure ; 
all delineated lines presuppose undelineated lines. A 
particle cannot move so as to describe a line unless the 
path it is to traverse already exists. In any portion of 
solid space there must be any number of undemarcated 
surfaces which are perfectly plane, and in each plane there 
must be any number of undemarcated lines which are 
perfectly straight and of circles which are perfectly 
circular. 2 The geometrical possibility of demarcated figures 
simply consists in the actual existence of corresponding 
undemarcated figures. From this point of view, such 
geometrical constructions as the perfect circle are neces- 
sarily possible. They express the actual nature of space, 

1 I do not affirm that the doubt is ultimately justified. 
2 Cf. Hallam's Criticism of Locke in his History of European Literature. 



i ERROR 43 

and are, in this sense, real. But it is only in this sense 
that the geometer regards them as real. 

It may be said that after all we do not know whether 
such demarcated figures as the perfect circle ever actually 
exist. I reply that the geometrician does not affirm their 
actual existence. What he does affirm as actual is that 
constitution of space on which the possibility of these con- 
structions is founded. To affirm a possibility is to affirm 
that certain conditions A actually exist, have existed, or will 
exist, of such a nature that if certain other conditions B 
were actualised, something else C would be actualised. B 
is hypothetical. C as dependent on B is also hypothetical. 
But A is actual ; and apart from A the hypothetical pro- 
position would have no meaning. In the present instance, 
C is the existence of such demarcated figures as the perfect 
circle ; B is the existence of certain physical or psycho- 
logical conditions ; A is the actual constitution of space. 
It is in A that the geometrician is interested. Further, 
his insight in regard to A enables him to understand how 
and why, if B were actualised, C must necessarily be 
actualised. Owing to the actual nature of space as 
cognised by him, C is and is seen to be necessarily 
possible. Even where the connection of antecedent and 
consequent lacks this intelligible transparency, it still 
remains true that every valid hypothetical proposition 
expresses the actual nature of some specific reality. If 
certain conditions are fulfilled, this acorn will grow into 
an oak. This means that the actual acorn as I hold it 
in my hand is actually constituted in a certain manner. 
Similarly, the full import of any hypothetical proposition 
can only be expressed by translating it into a corre- 
spondingly specific categorical proposition. 

As a last example of abstract thinking we may refer 
to the science of number. Numbered groups of existing 
things must be distinguished from pure number. There 
are, let us say, three eggs in this basket and three terms 
in a syllogism. Here we have only two distinct groups 
of three, because there are only two groups of countable 
things to be numbered. But if we ignore the adjectival 



44 G. F. STOUT i 

relation of number to something else which is counted, 
we find that an interminable series of groups of three is 
necessarily possible. It may be said that number must 
always be the number of something. In a sense, this is 
true. But the something may be anything whatever if 
only it is capable of being numbered. Thus pure number 
is not considered as an adjective of anything except of the 
numerable as such. This is equivalent to making it 
merely an adjective of itself and therefore not an adjective 
at all. It is not an adjective because the conception of 
the numerable as such is included in the abstract con- 
ception of number itself. Now pure number thus defined 
is certainly real inasmuch as it has a positive and 
determinate nature to which our thought concerning it 
may or may not conform. We can discover arithmetical 
truths and we can make arithmetical blunders. Further 
the field for thought which has pure number for its object 
is inexhaustible in range and complexity. A mind such 
as that of Aristotle's deity might occupy itself for ever 
with abstract number and nothing else to all eternity 
without exhausting its resources. So long as it was 
interested in this object there would be no reason why 
it should turn to any other. 

IX. Certainty 

§ io. In the initial statement of our problem stress was 
laid on the apparent fact that the unreal in erroneous belief 
is present to consciousness in the same manner as the real 
in true belief. We have now to point out that this is not 
always so. It is not so where the essential conditions of 
the possibility of error are absent. For, in such cases, a 
question answers itself so as to render doubt meaningless. 
This holds good for my assertion of my own existence as 
a conscious being and for such propositions as " 2 + I = 3 " 
or " Trilateral figures are triangular." In instances of this 
kind we can raise a doubt only by abandoning the proper 
question for another which is irrelevant. We may, for 
instance, ask : How far can we trust our faculties ? But 



i ERROR 45 

inquiries of this sort are futile and even nonsensical. 
They presuppose a meaningless separation of the thinking 
process from what is thought of, and then proceed to ask 
how far the thinking process, regarded merely as 
someone's private psychical affection can be " trusted " to 
reveal a reality extraneous to it. In all cognition, what 
we " trust " is not the psychical process of thinking or 
perceiving, but the thing itself which is thought of or 
perceived — -the thing concerning which we raise a question. 

It is urged by Mr. Bradley that all propositions, except 
perhaps certain assertions concerning the Absolute as such, 
must be more or less erroneous. His reason is that they 
are all conditional and that their conditions are never 
fully known. Whatever exists, exists within the universe 
and it is conditioned by the whole constitution of the 
universe. But if what exists within a whole is con- 
ditioned by so existing, no assertion as to what exists is 
true if stated apart from this condition. This argument 
seems to involve a confusion. It confuses conditions of 
the truth of a proposition with conditions of that which is 
stated in the proposition. 1 When I say, — " If this 
witness is to be trusted, Jones committed the theft," the 
"if" introduces a condition of the first kind. It suggests 
uncertainty. When I say, " If a figure is trilateral it is 
triangular," the "if" introduces a condition of the 
second kind. It does not suggest uncertainty. My own 
existence as a conscious being has conditions far too 
complex and obscure for me to discover. But these 
conditions do not condition the truth of the proposition 
that I exist. The inverse is the case. Because I am 
certain that I exist, I am certain that all the conditions 
of my existence, whatever they may be, exist also. Be 
they what they may, they are all logically included in the 
import of my thought when I affirm my own existence. 

Mr. Bradley's contention seems to rest on the assump- 
tion that, unless the universe is completely known, every 

1 This distinction corresponds in principle with that drawn by Mr. W. E. 
Johnson, between Conditional and Hypothetical propositions. Cf. Keynes, Formal 
Logic, pp. 271 sea. 



46 G. F. STOUT i 

assertion or denial about its contents must be liable to 
the error of ignorance, or rather, must actually incur the 
error of ignorance. Since we do not know everything, it 
is assumed that there always may be, or rather, must be 
something unknown which would be seen to falsify our 
judgment if we knew it. But this view is untenable if 
we are right in maintaining that there are limits to the 
possibility of error. Unexplored conditions can affect the 
truth of a statement only in so far as they are relevant, and 
their relevancy in each case depends on the nature of the 
question raised. Suppose the question to be, What is 
the sum of two and two ? By the very nature of the 
problem there can be no relevant data except just two 
and two considered as forming a sum of countable units. 
It may be urged that perhaps the numbers to be added 
do not exist, or that they may be incapable of forming a 
sum. But these doubts become meaningless as soon as 
we try to count. If there is nothing to count there can 
be no counting. But the supposition is absurd. Suppose, 
per impossibile, that we fail to find anything to count in 
the first instance. Our failure may then be counted as 
one thing and the act of counting it may be counted as 
another, and this second act of counting as yet another, 
and so on ad infinitum. 

To pursue this topic farther would lead outside the 
limits of the present essay. It is enough here to insist 
that there is such a thing as logically unconditioned truth. 
In order to attain absolute knowledge, it is by no means 
necessary to wait until we have attained an adequate 
knowledge of the absolute. The truth of judgments 
concerning what is real is not logically dependent on the 
truth of judgments concerning " Reality " with a capital R. 1 

1 I am aware that this essay is likely to raise more questions in the reader's 
mind than it even attempts to solve. Some of these I hope to deal with in the 
future ; e.g. the relation of the universal to the particular, the nature of the 
material world, and the nature and possibility of thought as dependent on the 
constitution of the Absolute. In dealing with these topics, I hope to develop 
more fully the grounds of that divergence from Mr. Bradley which is referred to 
in § 10 and implied elsewhere. 



II 

AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 
By F. C. S. Schiller 

I. The Growth of Experience 

1. Agreement that the world is experience + connecting principles — why we 

should start rather than conclude with this. 

2. But (a) whose experience ? Ours. Why self cannot be analysed away ; 

why knowledge of self depends on experience. 

3. (b) Experience of what ? The world. But what the world is, it is not 

yet possible to say completely. 

4. (1) The World not ready-made datum but constructed by a process of 

evolution, 

5. (2) i.e. of trial or experiment — original flexibility or indeterminateness 

of world. Experiment suggested by practical needs — conscious and 
unconscious experimenting. 

6. (3) Limits of experimenting— ' matter ' as resisting medium — impossi- 

bility of saying what it is in itself. Conception of material world 
developing in experience. Value of Aristotelian description of a 
ii\r) capable of being moulded. 

7. (4) The ' World,' therefore, is what is made of it — plastic. How far, 

to be determined only by trying. But methodologically plasticity 
assumed to be complete. Provisional character of our ' facts.' 

8. Bearing of this 'pragmatism ' or ' radical empiricism ' on the nature of 

axioms. Their origin as postulates to which we try to get world to 
conform. Contrast with the old empiricism and apriorism. 

II. Criticism of Empiricism 

9. (1) Its standpoint psychological, (2) intellectualist, (3) axioms pre- 

supposed in the experience which is supposed to impress them on us — ■ 
Mill's admissions, (4) derivation not historical, but ex post facto recon- 
struction, (5) its incompleteness, (6) impossibility of really tracing 
development of axioms and so unprogressiveness. 

III. Criticism of Apriorism 

10-25. Its superficial plausibility and real obscurity. Fallacy of inferring 

from § 9 (3) that there are a priori truths. 
II. How postulates also yield 'universality' and 'necessity.' ' Necessity r 

and need. 

47 



48 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

12. 'Condition of all possible experience' means? Might be (i) cause or 

psychical antecedent, (2) presupposition of reflection (logical), or (3) 
ethical or asthetical. Objections. 

13. Meaning of ' a priori '; (1) logical or (2) psychological* Equivocations of 

apriorist authority. 
14-18. The a priori as logical. But why analyse in Kant's way? Exclusive 
correctness of Kantian analysis not to be based either ( 1 ) on its a priori 
truth, or (2) on experience of its satisfactory working. Else why should 
Kantians have tried to better it ? 

1 5. Kant's derivation of his analysis from psychology. 

16. Even if it were satisfactory, no proof that it would be the only or the 

best possible. 

17. If a priori is not in time, its superiority to the a posteriori merely 

honorific. 

18. Kant's analysis neither simple nor lucid. 

19-22. A priori as psychical fact. But if so, has it (1) been correctly 
described? (2) how is it distinguished from innate idea? (3) does not 
epistemology merge in psychology? 

20. As facts a priori truths have a history, which must be inquired into. 

21. A priori faculties tautologous, and 

22. should not be treated as ultimate. 

23. Result that science of epistemology rests on systematic confusion of 

alternative interpretations of apriority. The proper extension of logic 
and psychology. 

24. Intellectualism of both apriorism and empiricism incapacitates them from 

recognising unity and activity of organism. How this may be recognised 
by deriving axioms from a volitional source by postulation. 

25. Kant's recognition of postulation in ethics — its conflict with his 'critical' 

theory of knowledge — resulting dualism intolerable. Hence either 
(1) suppress the Practical Reason or preferably (2) extend postulation 
to Theoretic Reason. 

IV. Some Characteristics of Postulation 

26. Postulates at first tentative and not always successful — their various 

stages and common origin — the theoretic possibility of changing axioms 
not practically to be feared. 

27. Postulates not a coherent system inter se except as rooted in personality. 

V. The Postulation of Identity 

28. Not to be derived out of nothing, but out of a prior psychical fact on 

the sentient level of consciousness — why consciousness itself cannot be 
derived — its characteristics on the sentient level. 

29. Hence identity (of self) first felt in the coherence and continuity of 

mental processes, and forms basis for the postulation of identity — the 
practical necessity of recognising the ' same ' in the ' like.' 

30. Once postulated, identity proves a great success, though never completely 

realised in fact. Stages of identity -postulation : (1) recognition of 
others and objects of perception. But these change and so do not 
provide a stable standard of comparison. Hence (2) postulation of 
ideally identical selves. 

31. (3) Meaning demands absolute identity and recognition leads to cogni- 

tion — advantage of classification by ' universals ' which abstract from 
differences. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 49 

32. (4) The use of language, i.e. identifiable symbols, connected with the 

demand for identity. 

33. Logical bearings of this doctrine. The practical purpose of the judgment 

as the clue to the meaning of predication and as determining the limits 
to which abstraction shall be carried. 

34. Limitations and conventions on which the logical use of identity depends. 



VI. Other Postulates 

35. The concurrent development of consciousness of 'self and ' other ' = the 
' external world, ' postulated to account for felt unsatisfactoriness of 
experience. 

39. Postulation of Contradiction and Excluded Middle. 

37. Hypothesis a form of postulation. 

38. Causation a demand for something whereby we can control events. Its 

various formulations relative to our purposes. Sufficient Reason. 
The absolutely satisfactory as 'self-evident.' The infinite regress of 
reasons and causes limited by the purpose of the inquiry. 

39. Postulate of ' Uniformity of Nature.' Suggested by gleams of regularity 

amid primitive chaos. Methodological advantage of postulating com- 
plete regularity. Its practical success. 
40-3. The Space and Time Postulates. Kant's reine Atischamtng a hybrid 
between perception and conception and so a confusion of psychology 
and logic. Really psychological data have served as basis for concep- 
tual constructions which are methodological postulates. 

41. Construction of physical space out of sensory data. Geometrical space 

a construction to calculate behaviour of real bodies. Antithesis between 
qualities of perceptual and conceptual space — reasons for postulating 
the latter. 

42. Alternative conceptual constructions of 'metageometry.' Their obscurity 

due to their greater complexity and uselessness. A conceptual space 
is valid in so far as ztseful, but never real. 

43. Time: (i) subjective, (2) objective, (3) conceptual. (1) Too variable to 

be useful, (2) a social necessity, but relative, (3) a postulate. 

44. Other postulates, e.g. substance, passed over. 

45-7. Postulates not yet fully axiomatic. (1) Teleology — its derivation from 
the postulate of knowableness. Necessity of anthropomorphism. 
Rational human action teleological. Why this is not extended by 
science to nature. Its misuse by professed believers — possibility of 
future use. 

46. Ultimately mechanical methods imply teleology, assuming that world 

is partly conformable to our ideals. But part being given, we must 
assume all. Postulation as illustrating the teleology of axioms. 

47. (2) Religious postulates — personality and goodness of God — immortality. 



VII. Concluding Reflections 

48. The psychological possibility of instinctive postulation and its relation 

to logical justification. 

49. The method of origins never gives complete explanation. But validity 

must be connected with origin. Completeness unattainable while 
knowledge is still growing. 

50. Effects on philosophy — a return to practice and a perception of the 

inadequacy of intellectualism. 

E 



50 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

51. Belief in the alleged incompetence of the reason due to (1) the putting 

of questions which have no practical value and ultimate meaning, 
(2) 'antinomies.' But these at bottom volitional and due to a refusal 
to choose between conflicting aims. E.g. the 'insoluble mystery of 
evil.' Methodological necessity of assuming all real problems to be 
soluble. 

52. Gain to philosophy because (1) more responsibility felt about volun- 

tary confusions of thought which (2) are more easily remedied and 
to which (3) the young are not pledged. Invigorating effect of Prag- 
matism. 



I 

§ I. The first survey of his subject ought to be sufficient 
to appal the intending writer on almost any philosophic 
topic. The extent, variety, and persistence of the diverg- 
ences of opinion which he finds are such that he needs 
to be possessed of unusual faith and courage not to 
despair of convincing even an unprejudiced reader — and 
in philosophy where shall he be found ? — that his under- 
taking holds out any prospect of scientific advance. For 
it needs no little philosophic insight to perceive that 
these divergences, instead of discrediting Philosophy, are 
really a subtle tribute to its dignity. They testify that 
in our final attitude towards life our whole personality must 
be concerned, and tend to form the decisive factor in the 
adoption of a metaphysic. As soon as a metaphysic 
attempts to be more than ' a critical study of First Pre- 
judices,' and essays to be constructive, it will always come 
upon a region where different men argue differently, and 
yet with equal cogency, from (apparently) the same 
premisses. The most reasonable explanation of this 
phenomenon is to admit that as the men are different, 
and differ in their experience, neither the data which 
have to be valued, nor the standards by which they are 
valued, can really be the same. Indeed, the whole history 
of philosophy shows that the fit of a man's philosophy is 
(and ought to be) as individual as the fit of his clothes, 
and forms a crushing commentary on the intolerant 
craving for uniformity which ineffectually attempts to 
anticipate the slow achievement of a real harmony by 
the initial fallacies and brusque assumptions of a ' cheap 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 51 

and easy ' monism. It behoves the true philosopher, 
therefore, to be tolerant, and to recognise that so long as 
men are different, their metaphysics must be different, and 
that even so, nay for this very reason, any philosophy is 
better than none at all. 

But though the ultimate differences of philosophic 
opinion are probably too deeply rooted in human idio- 
syncrasy to be eradicated by any force of argument, it is 
none the less conducive to the progress of every philo- 
sophic discussion that some common ground of (at least 
apparent and preliminary) agreement should be found on 
which the rival views may test their strength. This is 
accordingly what I have tried to do, though it was not 
without difficulty that I seemed to discover two funda- 
mental points of initial agreement which would, I think, 
be admitted by nearly all who have any understanding of 
the terms employed in philosophic discussion. The first 
of these is that the whole world in which we live is 
experience and built up out of nothing else than experi- 
ence. The second is that experience, nevertheless, does 
not, alone and by itself, constitute reality, but, to construct 
a world, needs certain assumptions, connecting principles, 
or fundamental truths, in order that it may organise its 
crude material and transmute itself into palatable, manage- 
able, and liveable forms. 

Acceptance of these two propositions does not perhaps 
carry us far, and I have no desire to exaggerate its 
controversial value. For, as soon as we attempt to go a 
step farther and ask what, more precisely, is this ex- 
perience, out of which, and for the sake of which, it is 
agreed that all things are constructed, we speedily realise 
that we have, here also, stumbled unwittingly into a very 
quagmire of metaphysical perplexities. It is indeed a 
convenient fashion in high philosophic quarters to treat 
the harmless truism with the enunciation of which I have 
ventured to start, as the final term in a protracted course 
of dialectical philosophy, and to put forward Experience 
(written of course with very large capitals) as the ultimate 
explanation of all things. My excuse for not treating my 



52 F. C. S. SCHILLER „ 

readers (if any) to a similar performance must be that I 
have neither the heart nor the head for feats of this kind, 
and that they can always fall back upon the consoling 
dictum that experience is Experience (with the addition 
' of the Absolute ' thrown in, if they are very inquisitive), 
when they have found that my explorations in a very 
different direction lead to nothing interesting or valuable. 

§ 2. I shall accordingly proceed to divide my question 
into two. If all the world be experience and what is 
needed to understand that experience, (i) whose experi- 
ence is it ? and (2) of what is it experience ? To both 
questions again some will be satisfied to reply — ' of the 
Absolute, of course.' If that really contents them, and 
is all they wish to know, they had better read no further. 
For my part I hold that this answer, even if it were true 
and intelligible, is of no scientific or practical value what- 
soever, and hence cannot be of any philosophic value 
either, except to votaries of philosophies which have no 
scientific or practical value. 

To the first question, therefore, I shall make bold to 
answer, ' our experience,' or, if that imply too much 
agreement among philosophers, and I may not take a 
common world for granted, more precisely, ' my 
experience.' 

Here again I must be prepared to be assailed by a 
furious band of objectors intent on asking me — " Who 
are you ? How dare you take yourself for granted ? 
Have you not heard how the self is a complex psycho- 
logical product, which may be derived and analysed 
away in a dozen different ways ? And do you actually 
propose to build your philosophy upon so discredited a 
foundation ? " 

To all this the simplicity of my humble reply may, I 
fear, be thought to savour of impertinence. I shall 
merely say " Abate your wrath, good sirs, I beseech you. 
I am right well aware of what you urge. Only I have 
observed also a few facts which in your scientific zeal you 
have been pleased to overlook. In the first place I notice 
that these analyses of the self you allude to are various, 



n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 53 

and that so the self may find safety in the very multitude 
of its tormentors. I observe, secondly, that the analysis 
is in every case effected by a self. And it always gives 
me a turn when the conclusion of an argument subverts 
its own premiss. Next I note that these analyses being 
the products of a self, must, if that self is (like my own) 
rational, serve some purpose. But unless that purpose is 
the highest of all (which in your case I see no reason 
to suppose), the validity of the whole procedure will be 
relative, and its value methodological. It may be 
excellent, therefore, for your purposes and quite 
unsuitable for mine. And, lastly, I observe that an 
analysis does not fall from heaven ready made ; it is the 
product of a purposive activity, and however appalling it 
may sound, it remains brutum fulmen until such time as 
somebody chooses to adopt it. It is from this act of 
choice, then, that its real efficacy springs, and if I choose 
to analyse differently or not at all, if I find it convenient 
to operate with the whole organism as the standard unit in 
my explications, what right have Scribes and Pharisees 
to complain ? For in either case the choice must be 
justified by its consequences, by the experience of its 
working, and I am not aware that anything valuable or 
workable has resulted from the psychological analyses in 
question. I am therefore sanguine that the assumption of 
my own existence, which I provisionally make, may very 
possibly turn out better and be less futile than any of 
the denials of the self which it may seem convenient to 
maintain for certain restricted and technical purposes of 
psychologies which neglect their proper problem in their 
anxiety to be ranked among the ' natural sciences.' 

" As for the other, personal, question — ' Who am I ?' — 
that we shall see. I say we pointedly, because, to be quite 
frank, I too am still learning what I am, by experience. 
For unfortunately I was as little endowed with any 
a priori knowledge of myself as of anything else. Hence 
I can only say, provisionally, that I am at least what I 
am, and what I am capable of becoming. For I have a 
notion that my career is not yet over. In saying this 



54 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

I do not, of course, lay claim to anything unknowable ; I 
only mean that I am not anything completely known, 
either to myself or any one else, until I cease to have new 
experience. And if you are content to share these 
humble attributes and to be selves in this sense, you are 
very welcome ! " 

§ 3. I come next to the second question — what is it 
I experience ? The answer must be very similar. My 
knowledge of the object of experience — we may call it 
' the world ' for short — is still imperfect and still growing. 
And so though I may provisionally describe it by all the 
ordinary phrases as ' external,' and material, and spatial, 
and temporal, I do not attach much value to them, and 
cannot honestly say that I know what it ultimately is. 
For I do not know what it will ultimately turn into. 
Not of course that I despair on that account of 
ultimately answering this question also to everybody's 
satisfaction (and especially to my own ! ). Only the 
world of knowledge always seems to be painted on an 
uncompleted background of the unknown, and fresh 
knowledge is always coming in which modifies the total 
impression. This knowledge is largely (or perhaps 
wholly) the result of guesses which I cannot help making, 
like my fathers before me, for practical reasons. As for 
the character and the details of these guesses, are they not 
written in the histories of human sciences and religions ? 

§ 4. In reflecting on these histories, however, I observe 
several things which seem to have no slight bearing on 
the question of the nature of the world and our knowledge. 

(1) The world, as it now appears, was not a ready- 
made datum ; it is the fruit of a long evolution, of a 
strenuous struggle. If we have learnt enough philosophy 
to see that we must not only ask the ontological question, 
What is it ? but also the profounder epistemological 
question to which it leads, How do we know what it 
is ? we shall realise that it is a construction which 
has been gradually achieved, and that the toil thereof 
dwarfs into insignificance the proverbial labour Romanam 
condere gentem. As a rule we do not notice this, partly 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 55 

because we are taught to neglect the history of ideas 
for the sake of burdening our memory with the history 
of events (which very likely did not happen in the manner 
alleged), partly because the sciences have a habit of 
evading the verbal confession of the changes which the 
growth of knowledge has wrought in their conceptions. 
Thus the physicist continues to use the term ' matter,' 
although it has come to mean for him something very 
different from the simple experiences of hardness and 
resistance from which its development began, and although 
he more and more clearly sees both that he does not 
know what ' matter ' ultimately is, and that for the 
purposes of his science he does not need to know, so 
long as the term stands for something the behaviour 
of which he can calculate. 

§ 5. (2) I observe that since we do not know what 
the world is, we have to find out. This we do by trying. 
Not having a ready-made world presented to us the 
knowledge of which we can suck in with a passive 
receptivity (or rather, appearing to have such a world 
to some extent only in consequence of the previous 
efforts of our forerunners), we have to make experiments 
in order to construct out of the materials we start with 
a harmonious cosmos which will satisfy all our desires 
(that for knowledge included). For this purpose we 
make use of every means that seems promising : we try 
it and we try it on. For we cannot afford to remain 
unresistingly passive, to be impressed, like the tabula rasa 1 
in the traditional fiction, by an independent ' external 
world ' which stamps itself upon us. If we did that, we 
should be stamped out. But experience is always more 
than this : it is either experiment or reaction, reaction 
upon stimulation, which latter we ascribe to the 'external 
world.' But reaction is still a kind of action, and its 
character still depends in part on the reacting agent. 
Nor have we any independent knowledge of the ' external 

1 It is hard to say why this inadequate illustration should continue to haunt 
philosophic discussion, the more so as it always missed the point. For as 
Lotze has so well observed the ' receptivity ' of the tablet is really due to the 
intrinsic nature of the wax and not to an absence of positive character. 



56 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

world ' ; it is merely the systematic way in which we 
construct the source of the stimulation on which we feel 
ourselves to be reacting. Hence even our most passive 
receptivity of sensations can, and should, be construed 
as the effortless fruition of what was once acquired by 
strenuous effort, rather than as the primal type to which 
all experience should be reduced. In it we are living 
on our capital (inherited or acquired), not helping to carve 
out (' create ') the cosmos, 1 but enjoying the fruits of our 
labours (or of those of others !). Which is pleasant, but 
not interesting. What is interesting is the course of 
the active experimenting which results in the arts, the 
sciences, and the habits on which our social organisa- 
tion rests. 

I proceed accordingly to consider the mass of experi- 
ments which collectively make up the world-process and 
by their issue determine the subsequent course of affairs. 
At the outset there seems to be nothing determined, 
certain, or fixed about it. We may indeed shrink from 
the assertion of an absolute indeterminism, but it is certain 
that we cannot say what made or determined the character 
of the first reaction, and that the first establishment of a 
habit of reaction is a matter of immense difficulty. And 
to a less extent this indeterminateness persists as the 
structure of the cosmos grows. The world is always 
ambiguous, always impels us at certain points to say, 
' it may be,' ' either . . . or,' etc. 2 Nor were it well 
that it should grow rigid, unless we were assured that it 
would set in forms we could not wish to change. As it 
is, we have no absolute nor initial rigidity. All deter- 
minations are acquired, all are ratified, by their working ; 

1 It is significant that most of the words which have been used to express 
the conception (?) of creation are metaphors which meant originally to hew 
or shape. For if, as seems probable, the conception of absolute ' creation ' 
('out of nothing') be ultimately unthinkable, the assumed 'metaphor' will be 
able to supply the true conception. 

2 We do not, of course, affect the fact by assuming its absolute determination, 
'if only we knew all.' For this is merely a postulate, devised to keep us in 
good heart while calculating, and in order that we may be able to forecast the 
future. We may be able to achieve the realisation of this ideal in a cosmos 
absolutely determined and absolutely satisfactory, but at present it is not true 
that for us practically all things are determined. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 57 

nothing can be said to be absolutely exempt from modi- 
fication and amendment by experience of its working. 

The intellectual cosmos also neither has nor needs 
fixed foundations whose fixity is an illusion. Like the 
physical universe it is sustained by the correspondence 
and interplay of its parts ; or, if we prefer it, floats freely 
in a sea of the unknown, which now and again buffets it 
with its waves, but across which the sciences have 
established well-travelled routes of intellectual inter- 
course. 

The cosmos grows, as we have said, by experiment. 
Such experiment may have been random at first (as 
for methodological purposes we shall be prone to assume) ; 
at all events it was vague, and its prescience of its issue 
was probably obscure. In any case its direction is 
ultimately determined not so much by its initial gropings 
as by the needs of life and the desires which correspond 
to those needs. Thus the logical structures of our mental 
organisation are the product of psychological functions. 1 

It must next be admitted that when it is said that 
the world is constructed by experiment, the conception 
of experiment is taken very widely and in a way that 
extends far beyond the conscious experiment of the 
scientist who is fully aware of what he does and what he 
wants, and precisely controls all the conditions. Of the 
' experimenting ' which builds up the cosmos the scientific 
experiment is only an extreme case which even now is 
comparatively rarely realised. Most of the experimenting 
that goes on is blind or very dimly prescient, semi- 
conscious or quite unconscious. To what extent there 
is consciousness of the experimenting depends of course 
on the mental development of the beings engaged in it ; 
for while in the lowest it is infinitesimal, the more intel- 
ligent they become the more capable they are of taking 
the experimenting into their own hands. 

But from the experimenting itself there is no escape ; 

1 In this aspect logic is related to psychology as morphology is to physiology. 
A 'logical necessity,' therefore, always rests upon, issues from, and is discovered 
by, a psychological need. Dr. Bosanquet adopts the comparison, but does not 
work it out, in his Logic. 



58 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

it goes on, and if we refuse to experiment, we are ex- 
perimented with. Nay, in this sense we are all nature's 
experiments, attempts to build up a world of beings that 
can maintain themselves permanently and harmoniously. 
We are asked as it were, " Can you do this ? " and if we 
cannot or will not, and " do not answer," we are eliminated. 
The elimination which is involved in this experimenting 
habit of nature's has in modern times been widely 
recognised, under the name of Natural Selection ; its 
essence is that a large number of individuals and varieties 
should be produced on trial (as ' accidental variations ' 
or Beta fxolpq), and that upon those that stood their trials 
best should devolve the duty of carrying on the world. 
The conception of Natural Selection was suggested by 
human selection ; its procedure by trying is so far 
analogous to that of our own intelligence, and it is denied 
to be that of an intelligence only because of a misunder- 
standing of the methodological character of the postulate 
of indefinite variation. 1 We may therefore plausibly 
contend that if a superhuman intelligence is active in the 
forming of the cosmos, its methods and its nature are the 
same as ours ; it also proceeds by experiment, and adapts 
means to ends, and learns from experience. 

We see then that there are two excellent reasons for 
conceiving the notion of experiment so broadly. In the 
first place it becomes possible thereby to comprehend 
under one head the infinite complications and gradations 
which are possible in the consciousness of the experimenter, 
from the most random restlessness and the most blindly 
instinctive adaptations, to the most clearly conscious 
testing of an elaborate theory ; in the second, it serves 
to bring out the radically tentative tendency which runs 
through the whole cosmos. And if the propriety of a 
phrase may be held to atone for the impropriety of a 
pun, we may sum up our result by saying that the clue to 
experience must be found not in words but in deeds, and 
that the method of nature and the true method of philo- 
sophy is not a Dialectic but a Trialectic. 

1 Cf. Contemp. Rev., June 1897, p. 878. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 59 

8 6. (3) In describing our activity in constructing 
the world by experimenting or making trial, I may seem 
to have ignored the subject-matter of the experiment, 
that in which and the conditions under which we 
experiment. But of course I have no intention of 
denying the existence of this factor in our experience 
and, consequently, in our world. We never experiment 
in vacuo ; we always start from, and are limited by, 
conditions of some sort. Just as our experiment must 
have some psychological motive to prompt it and to 
propel us, so it must be conditioned by a resisting 
something, in overcoming which, by skilfully adapting 
the means at our disposal, intelligence displays itself. 
Let it be observed, therefore, that our activity always 
meets with resistance, and that in consequence we often 
fail in our experiments. 

But while there can be no dispute as to the fact of 
this resistance, there may be not a little as to its nature, 
and no slight difficulty about defining it with precision. 
It would be pushing Idealism to an unprofitable extreme 
to revert at this point to the ancient phrases about the 
Self positing its Other and so forth. But the opposite 
and more usual device of dubbing it an objective or 
material world which exercises compulsion upon us, is 
also not free from objection. 

For what is so misleading about this traditional 
manner of talking is that it implies just what we have 
seen to be untrue, viz. that there is an objective world 
given independently of us and constraining us to 
recognise it. Whereas really it is never an independent 
fact, but ever an aspect in our experience, or better still, 
a persisting factor in it, which we can neither isolate nor 
get rid of. Hence, however far back we essay to trace 
it, we can never say either what it is really and in itself, 
or that it has disappeared. If we take it as it appears 
in our experience as now organised, we are, similarly, 
met with the difficulty that what it now is is nothing 
definitive, but merely a term in a long development the 
end of which is not yet in sight. And if, led by such 



60 F. C. S. SCHILLER » 

considerations, we look forward and declare that the 
objective world most truly is whatever it develops into, 
who will take it upon himself to prophesy concerning its 
future developments, and guarantee that it will always 
remain objective in the way it is at present, that it will 
continue to resist and constrain ? For already it is only 
partially true that it constrains us ; it is becoming 
increasingly true that we constrain it, and succeed in 
moulding it into acceptable shapes. In what sense, 
therefore, should we continue to call ' objective ' a world 
which had ceased to be objectionable and had become 
completely conformable and immediately responsive to 
our every desire ? 

The truest account, then, it would seem possible to 
give of this resisting factor in our experience is to revive, 
for the purpose of its description, the old Aristotelian 
conception of ' Matter ' as v\t) Be/cri/cr) tov etSovs, as 
potentiality of whatever form we succeed in imposing on 
it. It may be regarded as the raw material of the 
cosmos (never indeed wholly raw and unworked upon), 
out of which have to be hewn the forms of life in which 
our spirit can take satisfaction. To have lost this sense 
of ' matter,' in the effort to render its notion more precise 
and useful for the purposes of the natural sciences, is a 
real loss to philosophy. And yet the notion of matter 
as an indeterminate potentiality which, under the proper 
manipulations, can assume the forms we will, reasserts 
itself de facto whenever the great physicists set themselves 
to speculate respecting the ' ultimate constitution of 
Matter.' For provided only that their results enable 
them to calculate, more or less, the behaviour of sensible 
matter, they never hesitate to calculate into existence 
new ' ethers ' and modes of matter and to endow them 
with whatever qualities their purpose demands and their 
imagination suggests. 

§ 7. (4) The world, then, is essentially v\t], it is what 
we make of it. It is fruitless to define it by what it 
originally was or by what it is apart from us (?) v\rj 
ayvcocrros icaO' avrrjv) ; it is what is made of it. Hence 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 61 

my fourth and most important point is that the world is 
plastic, and may be moulded by our wishes, if only we are 
determined to give effect to them, and not too conceited 
to learn from experience, i.e. by trying, by what means we 
may do so. 

That this plasticity exists will hardly be denied, but 
doubts may be raised as to how far it extends. Surely, 
it may be objected, it is mere sarcasm to talk of the 
plasticity of the world ; in point of fact we can never go 
far in any direction without coming upon rigid limits and 
insuperable obstacles. The answer surely is that the 
extent of the world's plasticity is not known a priori, but 
must be found out by trying. Now in trying we can 
never start with a recognition of rigid limits and in- 
superable obstacles. For if we believed them such, it 
would be no use trying. Hence we must assume that we 
can obtain what we want, if only we try skilfully and 
perseveringly enough. A failure only proves that the 
obstacles would not yield to the method employed : it 
cannot extinguish the hope that by trying again by other 
methods they could finally be overcome. 

Thus it is a methodological necessity to assume that the 
world is wholly plastic, i.e. to act as though we believed 
this, and will yield us what we want, if we persevere in 
wanting it. 

To what extent our assumption is true in the fullest 
sense, i.e. to what extent it will work in practice, time and 
trial will show. But our faith is confirmed whenever, by 
acting on it, we obtain anything we want ; it is checked, 
but not uprooted, whenever an experiment fails. 

As a first attempt to explain how our struggle to 
mould our experience into conformity with our desires is 
compatible with the ' objectivity ' of that experience, the 
above may perhaps suffice, though I do not flatter myself 
that it will at once implant conviction. Indeed I expect 
rather to be asked indignantly — ' Is there not an objective 
nature which our experiments do not make, but only 
discover? Is it not absurd to talk as if our attempts 
could alter the facts ? And is not reverent submission to 



62 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

this pre-existing order the proper attitude of the searcher 
after truth ? ' 

The objection is so obvious that the folly of ignoring 
it could only be exceeded by that of exaggerating its 
importance. It is because of the gross way in which this 
is commonly done that I have thought it salutary to 
emphasise the opposite aspect of the truth. We have 
heard enough, and more than enough, about the duty of 
humility and submission ; it is time that we were told 
that energy and enterprise also are indispensable, and that 
as soon as the submission advocated is taken to mean 
more than rational methods of investigation, it becomes a 
hindrance to the growth of knowledge. Hence it is no 
longer important to rehearse the old platitudes about 
sitting at the feet of nature and servilely accepting the 
kicks she finds it so much cheaper to bestow than half- 
pence. It is far more important to emphasise the other 
side of the matter, viz. that unless we ask, we get nothing. 
We must ask often and importunately, and be slow to 
take a refusal. It is only by asking that we discover 
whether or not an answer is attainable, and if they cannot 
alter the ' facts,' our demands can at least make them 
appear in so different a light, that they are no longer 
practically the same. 

For in truth these independent ' facts,' which we have 
merely to acknowledge, are a mere figure of speech. The 
growth of experience is continually transfiguring our 
' facts ' for us, and it is only by an ex post facto fiction 
that we declare them to have been ' all along ' what they 
have come to mean for us. To the vision of the rudi- 
mentary eye the world is not coloured ; it becomes so only 
to the eye which has developed colour ' sensitiveness ' : just 
so the ' fact ' of each phase of experience is relative to 
our knowledge, and that knowledge depends on our efforts 
and desires to know. Or, if we cling to the notion of an 
absolutely objective fact of which the imperfect stages of 
knowledge only catch distorted glimpses, we must at least 
admit that only a final and perfect rounding- off of 
knowledge would be adequate to the cognition of such 



n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 63 

fact. The facts therefore which we as yet encounter are 
not of this character : it may turn out that they are not 
what they seem and can be transfigured if we try. Hence 
the antithesis of subjective and objective is a false one : 
in the process of experience ' subject ' and ' object ' are 
only the poles, and the ' subject ' is the ' positive ' pole 
from which proceeds the impetus to the growth of 
knowledge. For the modifications in the world, which we 
desire, can only be brought about by our assuming them 
to be possible, and therefore trying to effect them. There 
is no revelation either of nature or of God, except to 
those who have opened their eyes ; and we at best are 
still self-blinded puppies. 

Even the notion that the appearances which reality 
assumes to our eyes may depend on the volitional attitude 
which we maintain towards them is a truism rather than 
an absurdity, 1 and nothing is more reasonable than to 
suppose that if there be anything personal at the bottom 
of things, the way we behave to it must affect the way it 
behaves to us. The true absurdity, therefore, lies in our 
ignoring the most patent facts of experience in order to 
set up the Moloch of a rigid, immutable and inexorable 
Order of Nature, to which we must ruthlessly immolate 
all our desires, all our impulses, all our aspirations, and ail 
our ingenuity, including that which has devised the very 
idol to which it is sacrificed ! 

§ 8. The above sketch of the nature and manner of 
the process which has moulded us and the world of our 
experience may have seemed to bear but remotely on the 
relations of Axioms to Postulates. In reality, however, 
it will be found that the whole subsequent argument has 
already had its main lines mapped out by our introductory 
discussion of the Weltanschauung which Prof. James 
has called pragmatism and radical empiricism} For when, 

1 Cf. James' Will to believe, pp. 28, 6i, 103 foil. And it is, of course, psycho- 
logically true that not only our delusions but also our perceptions depend on what 
we come prepared to perceive. 

2 Regarded as labels perhaps, neither of these terms is quite satisfactory. 
But as philosophic, like political, parties are commonly named (or nicknamed) by 
their opponents, it would be premature to attempt fixity of nomenclature until 
criticism has had its say. 



64 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

as we must do, we apply it to the theory of our cognitive 
faculties and the first principles whereby in knowledge we 
elaborate our experience (8 i), it leads to a very distinctive 
treatment of epistemological problems, differing widely 
from those traditionally in vogue. It follows that the 
general structure of the mind and the fundamental 
principles that support it also must be conceived as 
growing up, like the rest of our powers and activities, that 
is, by a process of experimenting, designed to render the 
world conformable to our wishes. They will begin their 
career, that is, as demands we make upon our experience 
or in other words as postulates, and their subsequent 
sifting, which promotes some to be axioms and leads to 
the abandonment of others, which it turns out to be too 
expensive or painful to maintain, will depend on the 
experience of their working. 

The contrast with both of the traditional accounts of 
the matter, both that of the old empiricism and of 
epistemological apriorism is well marked, and I hope to 
show that its superiority is no less palpable. 

The truth is that both the traditional accounts of the 
nature of Axioms are demonstrably wrong, and though to 
give such a demonstration may appear a digression, it will 
ultimately facilitate our progress. I shall accordingly 
indulge in a criticism, which will show that the axiomatic 
first principles, whereby we organise and hold together our 
knowledge, are neither the products of a passive experienc- 
ing, nor yet ultimate and inexplicable laws or facts of our 
mental structure, which require from us no effort to attain 
comprehension but only recognition and reverence as ' a 
priori necessary truths.' In the case of empiricism the 
criticism will be comparatively brief and easy, because its 
inadequacy is pretty generally conceded ; apriorism will 
demand a lengthier and more difficult discussion, because 
it has attempted to conceal its inadequacy behind so many 
technicalities of language, so many obscurities of argu- 
mentation and a fundamental duplicity in its standpoint. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 65 

II 

8 9. Taking then the old empiricism first, we observe 
that there seems to be little doubt about its standpoint. 
Its derivation of the axioms is frankly psychological, 
and describes how the mind may be conceived actually 
to come by them. Its psychology is doubtless mistaken, 
and its recourse to psychology to settle the problem of 
knowledge may often be crudely worded, but it propounds 
a definite method of answering a real question. And we 
are at least free from the perplexities which arise in 
apriorism when an argument is conducted on two planes at 
once, the psychological and the epistemological (logical), 
and the relations of the two are left carefully undefined. 

Secondly, it should be noted that empiricist psychology 
is at bottom quite as much infected with intellectualism 
as that of the apriorists. It conceives, that is, the 
experience which yields the elements of our mental 
structure as cognitive (' impressions,' ' ideas,' etc.) ; it 
does not place the central function of mental life in 
volitional striving and selective attention. Now intel- 
lectualism, though it may lend itself to many descriptive 
purposes in psychology and hence will probably never 
wholly disappear, is ultimately a misdescription of mental 
life even as psychology, while it is essentially incapable 
of connecting itself with the wider biological context, in 
which the organism is conceived as reacting on its 
environment, or with the higher ethical plane, on which 
it is conceived as a responsible person. 

I pass to the graver counts of the indictment. Em- 
piricism conceived a purely passive mind as being moulded 
by an already made external world into correspondence 
with itself in the course of a process of experience which 
overcame whatever native refractoriness the mind pos- 
sessed. 1 Hence we come by our belief that every event 
has a cause in consequence of the fact that there are 
causes in nature, and that this eventually impresses itself 

1 It is thus the exact converse of the account given above (§ 6) in which 
moulding activity was due to ' mind,' and resistance to ' matter.' 

F 



66 F. C. S. SCHILLER u 

upon us ; two and two make four, because there are units 
which behave so, and we must count them thus and not 
otherwise, though in another world, as Mill consistently 
observed, they might insist on making five, and force 
upon us a new arithmetic. So also it is because nature is 
uniform that an unbroken series of inductions per enumera- 
tionem simplicem hammers into us the principle of the 
' uniformity of nature.' 

To all this the fatal objection holds that these prin- 
ciples cannot be extracted from experience because they 
must already be possessed before experience can confirm 
them. Hume's simple discovery, that the connection of 
events which all assume is never a fact of observation, is 
as awkward for empiricism as for apriorism. Unless, 
therefore, we look upon the succession of events as 
possibly regular, it can yield no evidence of a principle 
of regularity ; until we count them, things are not 
numbered, until we look for order, order does not 
appear. In the case of the uniformity of nature Mill 
indeed practically concedes this ; he admits {Logic, bk. iii. 
ch. iii. § 2, and ch. vii. § i) that "nature not only is 
uniform, but is also infinitely various," that some pheno- 
mena " seem altogether capricious," and that " the order 
of nature as perceived at a first glance presents at every 
instant a chaos followed by another chaos." Now if this 
is still true of the impression produced on us by nature, 
whenever we assume the receptive attitude of a disinterested 
observer, how much more of a chaos must nature have 
appeared to the primitive intelligence which had yet to 
lay down the fundamental principles of cosmic order ? 1 

The truth is that the whole empiricist account of the 
derivation of axioms is not psychological history experi- 
enced by the primitive mind : like so much ' inductive 
logic ' it is at best an ex post facto reinterpretation (for 
logical purposes) of such experience by a reflecting mind 
which has already grasped, and long used, the principles 

1 There is of course ample evidence that this was actually felt to be the case. 
Primitive animism is [inter alia) an explanation of the material chaos of experi- 
ence by a corresponding spiritual chaos, conceived as rather more manageable. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 67 

of cosmic order. To the primitive mind such principles 
can at most be suggested by the regularity of phenomena 
like, eg., the alternation of day and night, or of organic 
habits (breathing, heartbeat, hunger, etc.) already acquired 
before reflection begins ; but if mere experience were the 
source of axioms, such suggestions of regularity would 
necessarily have their effect effaced by the preponder- 
antly chaotic character of the bulk of experience, and 
would be swept away by a cataract of ' lawless ' 
impressions. 

Again it is incumbent on us to note the difficulty of 
generalising the empiricist derivation of Axioms : though 
Empiricism is over 2000 years old, it has never been 
completely carried out, and few indeed would be found to 
envy the empiricist the task, e.g. of adequately deriving 
the Principle of Identity. 

And lastly, it affords just ground for complaint that 
empiricism as it stands, does not really satisfy the desire 
the appeal to which constituted its chief charm. It does 
not really exhibit the derivation of the axioms in a 
process of experience. It asserts indeed that such a 
derivation occurred. But it assigns to it a date in a 
so remotely prehistoric and prelogical age that it is im- 
possible to observe the details of the process. And in 
any case the process is complete. Thus, according to 
Mill, the romance of the axioms is past before real 
thinking and scientific induction begin : association has 
engendered them, but that does not prevent them from 
being final constituents of the present intellectual order; 
once established " in the dim red dawn of man," they 
are exempt from further vicissitudes, and undergo no 
selection or real confirmation in the development of our 
intelligence. Thus they lay claim to the same vicious 
finality as their rivals the a priori structures of the mind : 
neither the one nor the other leaves room for a real 
growth in the intrinsic powers of the mind. 



68 F. C. S. SCHILLER 



III 



§ 10. But to castigate empiricism is to flog a dead 
horse ; to go on an expedition against apriorism is to 
plunge into an enchanted forest in which it is easy to 
miss the truth by reason of the multitude of " universal 
and necessary truths " which bar one's way. 

At first, indeed, nothing seems easier and more obvious 
than the considerations upon which apriorism is based. 
If there are certain truths which are necessary to all 
knowing, which are implied in the existence of every 
act of knowledge, if these truths cannot be derived from 
experience because they are presupposed by all experi- 
ence, if, as we said, we must be in possession of them 
before experience can confirm them, then what can we 
do but call them a priori and suppose that they reveal 
the ultimate self-evident structure of the mind, which 
we must recognise, but which it would argue impiety to 
question and fatuity to derive ? 

Nevertheless I propose to show that beneath the thin 
crust of this self-evidence there lie concealed unsuspected 
depths of iniquity, that the clearness of the doctrine is 
superficial and gives way to deepening obscurity the 
farther it is explored, that in every one of the specious 
and familiar phrases, which apriorists are wont to fling 
about as the final deliverances of epistemological wisdom, 
there lurk indescribable monsters of ambiguity. Nay, 
my criticism will culminate in a demonstration that 
the whole conception of an independent and autonomous 
theory of knowledge is afflicted with an ineradicable 
and incurable confusion of thought, the clearing up of 
which demolishes the locus standi of the whole apriorist 
position. 

Let us note then in the first place that as an inference 
from the break-down of the old empiricism apriorism is 
devoid of cogency. It does not follow that because the 
' necessary ' truths are presupposed in all experience they 
are, in the technical sense, a priori. We must indeed 
be possessed of them to organise our experience, but we 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 69 

need not be possessed of them in the manner asserted. 
It suffices that we should hold them experimefitally, as 
principles which we need practically and would like to 
be true, to which therefore we propose to give a trial, 
without our adoring them as ultimate and underivable 
facts of our mental structure. In other words they may- 
be prior to experience as postulates} 

§11. Similarly the method of postulates is capable of 
supplying an alternative explanation of what, since Kant, 
have been esteemed two infallible marks of a genuine a 
priori truth, viz. its universality and necessity. It is 
not enough merely to contend that these truths cannot 
come from experience, because experience can only give 
fact and not necessity (or at least not an objective 
necessity), and because it can never guarantee an absolute 
universality which applies to the future as well as to 
the present and past. For a postulate possesses both 
these valuable characteristics by as good a right as an a 
priori truth, and is not afflicted with the impotence that 
besets a mere record of past experience. 

Its universality follows from its very nature as a 
postulate. If we make a demand that a certain principle 
shall hold, we naturally extend our demand to all cases 
without distinction of time, past, present, and to come. 
The shrinking modesty which clings to the support of 
precedent is out of place in a postulate. A truth which 
we assume because we want it may as well be assumed 
as often as we want it and for all cases in which it may 
be needed. We can make it therefore as universal as 
we please, and usually we have no motive for not 
making it absolutely universal. 2 Nor is the enormity 

1 To meet the obvious criticism that most people are quite unaware that they 
postulate in knowing, it may be well to add that the postulating, like the ' experi- 
menting,' may proceed with little or no consciousness of its nature. Indeed 
this is precisely the reason why the voluntarist and postulatory character of 
mental life has been so little recognised, and its assertion still appears such a 
novelty in philosophy. The philosophers who indignantly reject it argue that 
they are not aware of postulating, and ergo there is no such thing. But this 
is a mere ignoratio elenchi, and does not prove that they are not deluded. 

2 Sometimes, it is true, a principle which is assumed as useful for one 
purpose turns out later on to conflict with another. The scientific postulate of 
determinism and its relations to the ethical postulate of freedom are a good 
example. In such cases there is a temptation to deny the absolute universality 



70 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

of a postulate lessened, or atoned for, by self-denying 
economy in the use of it. A postulate is none the less 
a postulate because it is a little one, and if in making 
it we sin, we may as well sin boldly. 1 

Similarly the ' necessity ' of a postulate is simply an 
indication of our need. We want it and so must have it, 
as a means to our ends. Thus its necessity is that of 
intelligent purposive volition, not of psychical (and still 
less of physical) mechanism. 2 The inability to think 

of one or both of the conflicting principles. But the better way of obviating the 
conflict is to emphasise the fact that each principle is relative to the purpose for 
which it was assumed, and that consequently, on their respective planes and from 
their several points of view, both principles may be universally valid, though one 
or the other, or both, must eventually be subjected to reinterpretation. 

1 It is a great satisfaction to me to find myself on this point in complete agree- 
ment with Dr. Hodder [The Adversaries of the Sceptic, p. 14) whose merciless 
castigation of the half-hearted postulatings of some modern logicians, can, 
to my mind, be met only by an open avowal of the fundamental part played by 
postulation in the constitution of all knowledge (including Dr. Hodder's scepticism). 

2 I am of course painfully aware that the term necessity is exceedingly 
equivocal. At first sight it seems as though we could distinguish — 

1. 'Absolute' and intrinsic necessity sui (et optimi) juris (Aristotle's 
avayKaiov dirXwj Kal ■n-pwrws), of which the 'necessity' of a priori truths is 
commonly reputed to be an illustrious example. 

2. The conditional necessity of a logical train of thought, in which the 
conclusion follows ' necessarily ' from its premisses. 

3. The necessity of the ' necessary conditions ' under which all actions take 
place. This influence of the given material is Aristotle's ov ovk (Lvev. 

4. The necessity of means to ends (Aristotle's Siv ovk &vev to ayadbv), which 
renders the ' necessary ' ultimately the ' needful.' 

5. The psychical feeling of ' having to ' or ' compulsion ' (Aristotle's 
avayKaiov fllq.). 

But in reality the last two alone of these senses are primary and descriptive ot 
ultimate facts about our mental constitution, from which the others may be 
derived. The feeling of necessity (No. 5) may be evoked by a variety of 
circumstances, by physical constraint, by attempts to deny facts of perception, or 
to interrupt a train of thought which coheres, either logically, or psychologically 
(for all minds, or for an individual's mind). It arises wherever a volition is 
thwarted, and not until this occurs ; hence the necessity alike of fact and of 
reasoning appears to be ' implicit. ' The truth, however, is that factual data 
and logical reasonings are not ' necessary ' in themselves ; their ' necessity ' is 
only aroused in consciousness when the will needs to affirm them against 
resistance in the pursuit of its ends. That ' 2 and 2 must be 4 ' only marks the 
rejection of some other result : if we desire to adhere to our system of 
arithmetical assumptions and are determined to go on counting, we cannot be 
called upon to add 2 and 2 in any other way. But behind the ' can't ' there 
always lurks a ' won't ' : the mind cannot stultify itself, because it will not 
renounce the conceptions it needs to order its experiences. The feeling of 
necessity, therefore, is at bottom an emotional accompaniment of the purposive 
search for the means to realise our ends (sense 4). And inasmuch as the 
pursuit of means is unmeaning except in beings working under limitations 
in their choice of means, which means are themselves extracted from the 
resisting material (v\r/), the 'necessity' of the material conditions (sense 3) 
comes to be bound up with and included under this (4th) head. 

As for ' absolute necessity ' (sense 1) it is altogether a misnomer, involving a 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 71 

them otherwise, which is supposed to distinguish necessary 
truths, is at bottom a reficsal to do so, a refusal to strip 
oneself of useful means of harmonising one's experience 
at the summons of a casual doubt. To argue, then, from 
the universality and necessity of our axioms to their 
a priori origin is a non sequitur which should not be 
allowed to pass unchallenged, even if there were no 
alternative theory in the field. 

S 1 2. Let us consider next the possible meanings 
of the phrase ' a condition of all possible experience.' 
When an a priori truth is so denominated, what is the 
precise meaning attached to ' condition ' ? Does it mean 
that; without which experience cannot be, or cannot be 
thought, or cannot be thought in an cesthetically pleasing or 
ethically satisfactory manner? Evidently we ought to 
distinguish between a truth which is operative as a 
psychical antecedent fact causing the subsequent 
experience and a logical factor which is detected in that 
experience by subsequent reflection, but need not be 
actually present in consciousness at the time of 
experiencing, and so cannot be called a psychical fact. 
In the latter case the ' condition of the possibility of 
experience ' is not anything actually necessary to the 
experience, but rather necessary to its ex post facto 
reconstruction which ministers to our desire for the logical 
ideal of an intelligible system of experience. 

And of course the answer to the question — what are 
the conditions of thinking such a logical system]? — will 
depend on the mode of logical analysis we may choose to 
adopt : hence the burden of proof will rest with the 
advocates of any particular form of apriorism that their 
account is the only one possible. 

All these considerations may be urged with still 

contradiction in adjectis : necessity is always dependence, and the factual only 
becomes ' necessary ' by having a ground assigned to it, i.e. by sacrificing 
its independence and becoming hypothetical. But the hypothetical necessity of 
thought (sense 2), into which it is thus absorbed, is itself reducible to a means : 
Our coherent systems of ' necessary connection ' can (and will) be shown to be 
but means for the realisation of our purposes in thinking, and apart from these 
possess no necessity. No one need add 2 and 2 as 4 unless he needs to add, i.e. 
wills to add them, because he needs arithmetic. 



72 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

greater force against versions of the a priori conditions of 
experience which reduce themselves to demands (it is 
true for the most part semi-conscious and unavowed) 
that the cosmos shall conform to various aesthetical and 
ethical ideals : such demands may be entirely legitimate 
in their way, and I myself would be the last to think the 
worse of any philosopher for showing susceptibility to 
ethical and aesthetical ideals, and holding that their 
realisation also is included in the conditions of a thoroughly 
rational experience. But should they not be avowed as 
such ? and is it not entirely improper to mask them under 
the ambiguity of ' the conditions of experience ' ? There 
remains then only the first interpretation, which takes the 
' condition ' to be an actual psychical fact, and so decides 
in one way the very debatable question which must next 
engage our attention. 

S 13. What does a priori mean? When we speak 
of ' the a priori principles implied in the existence of 
all knowledge,' do we mean implied logically or psycho- 
logically ? Are they, that is, the products of a logical 
analysis or psycJdcal facts ? Is the ' priority ' asserted 
priority in time (psychical fact) or priority in idea (logical 
order) ? Or, horribile dictu, can it be that the a priori, 
as it is used, is a little of both, or each in turn, and that 
the whole apriorist account of our axioms rests on this 
fundamental confusion ? 

Of course it would be very pleasant if we could 
answer this question by an appeal to authority, if we 
could find, for choice in Kant, or, if not, in some of 
his followers and interpreters, an unambiguous and 
authoritative settlement of this question. But unfortu- 
nately Kant's own utterances are so obscure, ambiguous, 
and inconsistent, and his followers are in such disagreement, 
that this short and easy way is barred/ and that we shall 
have to adopt the longer, and perhaps more salutary, 
method of arguing out the logical possibilities of each 
interpretation. 

§ 14. I shall, accordingly, begin by considering the 
interpretation of the a priori as a term in a logical 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 73 

analysis, as it seems on the whole to be that best 
supported and most supportable. 

If we take the a priori as the outcome of a logical 
inquiry, as the product of a logical analysis describing 
how the formation of knowledge out of its constituent 
factors is to be conceived, if the world is to be thinkable 
(i.e. to satisfy our logical ideals), then the first point of 
which we shall require an explanation is how we come 
by these factors. In the Kantian analysis knowledge 
is said to arise out of the union of heterogeneous 
elements, Sensation and Thought, the former supplying 
the Matter, the latter the Form. But what authenticates 
Kant's fundamental antithesis of Matter and Form, 
Sensation and Thought, so that it should be imperative 
on every one to set out from it in his analysis of the 
nature of knowledge ? Why are we not to be at liberty 
to conduct our analysis in whatever way and by whatever 
principles appear to us most suitable ? Why should we 
be tied down to Kant's factors ? Has not Mr. Shadworth 
Hodgson recently shown that it is possible to construct 
a logical analysis of knowledge as elaborate and careful 
as Kant's (though perhaps just as unsound ultimately) 
without having recourse to a use of a priori principles ? 
Or better still, should we not do well to go back to 
Aristotle and find in his antithesis of mediate and 
immediate, discursive and intuitive, the basis of an 
analysis quite as legitimate in theory and far more 
fertile in practice? Is it not in short an unavoidable 
methodological defect of any ' epistemological ' argument 
that it must rest on an arbitrary selection of fundamental 
assumptions ? 

So far as I can see, the exclusive claims of the 
Kantian analysis could be defended only in two ways. 
It might be alleged that the recognition of its truth was 
itself an a priori necessity of thought. Or it might be 
contended that its correctness was guaranteed by the 
manner of its working, by our finding that, as a matter of 
subsequent experience, it did enable us to account rationally 
for all the observed characteristics of our knowledge. 



74 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

But would not the first defence be exposed to the 
crushing retort that it begged the question, and was 
nothing more than a circular argument which tried to 
make the unsupported allegation of a necessity of thought 
into the logical ground of that allegation ? 

The second defence on the other hand seems 
obnoxious to a double objection. In the first place has 
it not a pronounced empiricist trend, and is it consonant 
with the dignity of apriorism to introduce a sort of 
transcendental ' payment by results ' into the estimation 
of theoretical philosophemes ? And secondly, if we 
answer thus, it will be necessary, but not easy, to show 
that de facto the Kantian epistemology gives a complete 
and satisfactory answer to the whole problem. And I 
hardly anticipate that the distinguished philosophers who 
have devoted their lives to proving the necessity of going 
beyond Kant to Fichte, or Hegel, or Herbart, or 
Schopenhauer, because of the glaring defects they have 
found in Kant's system, will find it to their taste so to 
defend the Kantian position, even though it has supplied 
them with the common foundation of their several systems. 
We must either deny, therefore, that the truth of the 
Kantian analysis of knowledge is vouched for by its 
self-evident adequacy, by the pellucid cogency of its 
constructions, or assert that the whole procession of 
philosophers that has started from Kant has gone 
hopelessly astray. 

But after all it is not we who are concerned to find 
our way past the uninviting horns of this dilemma ; 
whether the Kantian analysis of knowledge is perfect and 
his followers have erred in amending it, or whether it is 
fundamentally wrong and his followers have erred in con- 
tinuing it, the point which has now aroused our curiosity 
is what guarantees it offers for the correctness of its 
presuppositions. Let us turn, therefore, to the history of 
philosophy and inquire whence as a matter of fact Kant 
derived the presuppositions of his analysis. 

§15. I greatly fear the answer will be shocking. 
Kant's whole construction seems to be based on psychology, 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 75 

nay on the psychology of the period ! How can this be 
reconciled with the assiduity with which the dominant 
school of Kant-Pharisees has preached that epistemology 
and psychology have nothing to do with each other and 
that the former must be kept quite clear from contamina- 
tion with the latter ? After it has been so long and 
laboriously instilled into us that subservience to psychology 
is the one deadly sin which the good epistemologist must 
shun, that psychology is the wicked realm of Hume, Mill, 
and the Devil, have we not a right to be shocked when 
we find that Kant himself has distilled his elixir vitce from 
this broth of Hell ? Is it not intolerable then to force 
us to employ psychological assumptions as to the nature 
of mind ? For even though it is permitted to receive 
instruction from a foe, we know that it is prudent to 
dread the Danaans even when they are bearing gifts. 

And yet the facts are hard to argue away. Is not the 
antithesis between the 'matter' of sensation and the 'form' 
of thought the old psychological distinction invented by 
Plato? Again has it not often been shown 1 that in its 
conception of the ' manifold of sensation ' the Kantian 
system presupposes all the figments of an empiricist 
psychology, and implies the very psychological atomism 
which the whole subsequent history of philosophy has 
shown to be unworkable, and which the simplest intro- 
spection shows to be untrue ? And is it not in a large 
measure because he vainly and falsely follows, nay out- 
does, Hume in assuming a wholly unformed and unfounded 
v\rj of sensations, which not all the a priori machinery 
made in Germany can ever really lick into shape, that 
Kant's epistemology breaks down ? 

And what Kant adds to this psychological mixture of 
Platonic dualism and Humian atomism is a no less 
unoriginal ingredient. It consists simply of a number 
of faculties, invented ad hoc, upon which devolves the duty 
(which we are vainly assured they are capable of fulfilling) 
of organising the formless matter with which they are 
supplied. But does not this commit the Kantian theory 

1 Most recently and lucidly in Mr. Hobhouse's Theory of Knowledge, p. 42. 



76 F. C. S. SCHILLER « 

of knowledge to another psychological fallacy, the effete 
and futile doctrine of faculties ? In fine what answer 
should we be able to make, nay how should we disguise 
our sympathy, if an enfant terrible should arise and declare 
that so far from being uncontaminated with psychology 
Kantian epistemology was in reality nothing but a 
misbegotten cross by faculty psychology out of Humian 
atomism ? 

I have never been able to discover from the apriorists 
what they conceive to be the relation of logical analysis 
to psychological fact, i.e. the actual process of experience, 
but if, as experience shows, some reference to the latter 
occurs, and is indeed inevitable, we may at least demand 
that the reference should be made clear and explicit. And 
in addition it may fairly be demanded that if a theory 
of knowledge cannot but rest on presuppositions as to the 
factual nature of conscious life, recourse should be had to 
psychological descriptions of the best and most modern 
type, before an attempt is made to decide what super- or 
extra-psychological principles are ' implied in the exist- 
ence of knowledge.' 

§ 1 6. It would seem then that the attempt to construe 
the a priori as a logical analysis independent of psycho- 
logical fact is not practicable, and cannot really dispense 
with an appeal to psychological assumptions which are 
arbitrary and exploded. But the difficulties of this theory 
of the a priori by no means end here. Supposing 
even that somehow, aided, let us say, by some spiritual 
influx from a nolimenal world, we had succeeded in con- 
structing a complete account of the structure of knowledge 
which satisfied every logical requirement, worked perfectly, 
and was applicable to everything that could be called 
knowledge, even so we should have gained an aesthetical 
rather than logical advantage. Our epistemology would 
be beautiful, because great and symmetrical, but would it 
be indisputably true ? Could we not conceive some other 
philosopher gifted with an equally synoptic imagination 
setting himself to compete with our lovely construction, 
and succeeding, perhaps, in throwing it into the shade of 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 77 

oblivion by a rival structure based on different assumptions, 
built up by different connections and excelling its pre- 
decessors in completeness, simplicity, and aesthetic 
harmony P 1 

Theoretically at least any member of such analyses of 
knowledge would seem to be possible ; for they have only 
to construct imaginary logical systems, to describe how 
knowledge may be conceived to be put together, without 
restriction as to the choice of principles assumed and 
without reference to what actually occurs in rerum natnra. 
It would need therefore the decree of some absolute and 
infallible despot of the intelligible world to secure for 
whatever a priori account was preferred — on account of its 
simplicity or aesthetic completeness or practical convenience 
— a monopoly of epistemological explanation. 

§17. However, even this may be conceded. I am in 
a yielding mood and not disposed to cavil or to stick at 
trifles, and so will not contest the right divine of Kant 
and his dynasty — he has too great a bodyguard of 
philosophy professors. 

I proceed only to point out a consequence of the 
attempt to construe the a priori logically without reference 
to psychical fact. It follows that its priority is not in 
time. For the whole matter is one of logical analysis. 
The actual knowledge, which the epistemologist professes 
to analyse, is then the real fact, and prior to the analysis 
which professes to explain it. It is the actual presupposi- 
tion of the analysis which distinguishes in it an a priori 
and an a posteriori element. Thus in actual fact the 
a priori and a posteriori elements in knowledge are co- 
eternal and co-indispensable, even though not esteemed 
co-equal. The priority therefore of the a priori is solely 
an honorific priority in dignity. A priori and a posteriori 
are merely eulogistic and dyslogistic appellations, which 
we are pleased to bestow upon factors which we are 
pleased to distinguish in one and the same act of know- 
ledge. In the concrete reality they are fused together ; 
there is no form without matter and no matter without 

1 That this actually occurs has been shown above (§ 14). 



78 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

form — crvve^evydaL fiev yap Tavra (paiverao /ecu ^(opi,cr/j,bv 
ov he^ecrOat} 

Now if this be the case, I cannot for the life of me see 
why such inordinate importance should be attached to the 
distinction of a priori and a posteriori, nay to the whole 
epistemological theory, nor why the naming and pre- 
cedence of such abstractions should be accounted essentials 
of philosophic salvation. What now hinders us from 
inferring from the course of the argument that the 
procedure and terminology of our epistemological analysis 
is arbitrary and indifferent, and that the real test of truth 
comes, not from any distinctions we assume beforehand, 
but a posteriori and empirically from the manner of its 
working ? 

§ i 8. As far as the Kantian analysis of knowledge is 
concerned, the issue can be narrowed down to this 
question, whether it works, and is the simplest and most 
convenient analysis that can be devised. If such a 
contention on its behalf can be substantiated, let it be 
called true, in the only sense in which mortal man can 
intelligibly speak of truth ; if not, let it be finally housed 
in that ' Museum of Curios ' which Prof. James has so 
delightfully instituted for the clumsy devices of an 
antiquated philosophy. 2 

Now this is a question which I could not presume to 
answer for others without a thorough knowledge of their 
tastes and customs of thought ; but personally I have 
long felt towards the Kantian epistemology not much 
otherwise than Alphonso the Wise felt towards the 
Ptolemaic astronomy when he realised its growing com- 
plications ; and if by incantations or recantations or 
decantations I could induce its author to leave the society 
and the otium cum dignitate of the Thing-in-itself, I would 
fain relieve my feelings by apostrophising him as follows : — 

' Oh mighty Master of both W r orlds and both Reasons, 
Thinker of Noiimena, and Seer of Phenomena, Schematiser 
of Categories, Contemplator of the Pure Forms of Intuition, 

1 Aristotle, Eth. Nick. x. 4. 11. 
2 Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results, p. 24. 



n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 79 

Unique Synthesiser of Apperceptions, Sustainer of all 
Antinomies, all-pulverising Annihilator of Theoretic Gods 
and Rational Psychologies, I conjure thee by these or by 
whatever other titles thou hast earned the undying 
gratitude of countless commentators, couldst thou not 
have constructed the theory of our thinking activity more 
lucidly and more simply ? ' 

§ 19. At this point it would seem to be time for 
believers in the a priori to shift their ground and to try 
another version of its meaning. I expect to be told, 
and in no measured terms, that I have misinterpreted 
and maligned Kant, and blasphemed against the sacred 
image of immutable truth which he has set up. Epistemo- 
logical analysis is not the arbitrary pastime of an idle 
imagination, ivSe^ofievov aWces e^eiu in myriad ways. 
A priori truths are facts which can neither be nor be 
conceived otherwise, and without which no other know- 
ledge can be or be conceived. 

" You will not surely," I shall indignantly be asked, 
" deny that you think by the principle of identity, that 
you predicate the categories of substance and causality, 
that you refer your experiences to a synthetic unity of 
apperception, that you behold them in space and time ? 
And we call these operations a priori, to indicate that 
without them you cannot know or experience anything 
at all." 

Very well, then, let us recognise the a priori truths as 
facts. If it is on this condition alone that I may use 
them, I will gladly grovel in the dust before them rather 
than that they should withdraw the light of their counten- 
ance and I should be cast into outer darkness. Still I 
cannot but hope that the said light is not so blinding 
that I cannot behold their features. Permit me, therefore, 
to trace them and to bask in their beauty. 

The a priori axioms are facts — real, solid, observable, 
mental facts — and woe betide the philosopher that collides 
with them ! In one word they are psychical facts of the 
most indubitable kind. 

My delight at having found something tangible at 



8o F. C. S. SCHILLER u 

the bottom of so much obscure terminology is so sincere 
that I have not the heart to be critical about their psycho- 
logical credentials. Let me waive, therefore, the question, 
mooted before, whether they have always been described 
with psychological accuracy, and by the best psychological 
formulas. I waive also the cognate question whether 
their description suffices to distinguish them unequivocally 
from their discredited ancestors, the innate ideas, which 
since Locke we have all been taught to deny with our 
lips. I will postpone also an obvious question as to 
what is now to prevent the theory of knowledge from 
being absorbed in psychology. For I have no wish to 
" sycophantise " against an argument which bids fair to 
become intelligible. 

§ 20. But of course I cannot close my eyes to the 
consideration that observable psychical facts have a history. 
The a priori axioms, therefore, may be contemplated 
historically, and psychogenetically ; and then, perhaps, the 
valet within me whispers, it will turn out that they were 
not always such superhuman heroines as they now appear, 
and that they have arrived at their present degree of 
serene exaltation from quite simple and lowly origins. 
Accordingly I shade my eyes, thus, and scrutinise their 
countenances, so, and lo ! I begin to discriminate ! They 
do not all seem to be of an age or of equal rank ; some, 
as Plato says, 1 are irpecrfieia ical hwd/xei virepkyavaai. 
Others seem to have been admitted into the Pantheon 
in historic times, while yet others have been thrown 
into the background, or even into Tartaros. Shade of 
Plato ! is not even the supercelestial World of Ideas 
exempt from change ? Nay more, their manners and 
bearing are not uniform, and I swear by Aphrodite, 
I believe some are rouged and powerless to hide the 
ravages of age ! 

To carry on the imagery would be too painful, but 
I must adhere to its meaning. If the a priori axioms 
are in any sense psychical facts, or contained in psychical 
facts, each of them has a theoretically traceable history, 

1 Republic, 509 B. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 81 

and in many cases that history is visibly written on their 
faces. They are complex growths which constitute 
problems for the philosophic mind ; they are in no sense 
solutions of the problem of knowledge, or of any other. 

Whoever then can carry their analysis farther, either 
historically, by showing how, when, and why they arose, 
or logically, by systematically connecting them with and 
deriving them from the other constituents of our nature, 
or by the mixed method to which the gaps in our know- 
ledge will probably long compel us, i.e. by supplementing 
and colligating actual observation by hypothesis, will 
have deserved well of philosophy, even though he will 
have had to sacrifice the dogma of the verbal inspiration 
of the Kantian Criticism. 

§ 21. Any such further inquiry into axioms, therefore, 
is necessarily preferable to any view which is content to 
leave them plantees la as insuperable, indissoluble, un- 
questionable, ultimate facts which obstruct the advance of 
science by their unintelligibleness. For what could be 
more disheartening than to encounter this serried array 
of a priori ' necessities of thought ' entrenched behind 
craftily contrived obstructions of technical jargon, and 
declining to yield or to give any account of themselves ? 

Can we indeed, so long as we tolerate their pretensions, 
be truly said to have explained the nature of knowledge 
at all ? For what do they do to explain it ? What do 
they do beyond vainly duplicating, as yuaraia e'lSr), the 
concrete processes of actual knowing ? At best they 
seem nothing but the capita mortua of a defunct faculty 
psychology, which offers us only a tautological Svva/xa in 
lieu of the evep^eta whereof we desired an explanation. 

I have experience of the spatially extended — forsooth, 
because I am endowed with a ' pure ' faculty of space 
perception ! I experience succession — forsooth, because I 
have the ' pure ' form of empty time ! I refer my 
experience to my 'self,' and the operation is 'explained ' 
by being rebaptised in the name of the Synthetic Unity 
of Apperception ! 

I know of course that Kant supposed himself to have 

G 



82 F. C. S. SCHILLER u 

guarded against this interpretation and the criticism which 
it provokes, by denying that the 'pure intuition ' of Space 
or Time is a priori only in the sense in which, e.g. the 
colour sense is prior to the colour perception. 1 But I 
should dispute his right to do this, and contend that 
in so far as he succeeded in establishing a difference, it 
was only at the cost of making the ' pure intuition ' 
prior to experience in the evil psychological sense of 
the ' innate idea.' 2 

§ 22. "But is not this whole indictment based on a 
refusal to recognise the axioms as ultimate ? And what 
do you hope to gain thereby ? For surely you do not 
mean to refuse to recognise anything as ultimate ? And 
what more deserving objects could you find for such 
recognition than the body of necessary truths ? " 

Certainly I do not in the least mean to commit myself 
to a denial of anything ultimate. Every inquiry must 
stop, as it must begin, somewhere. Only I am disposed 
to deny that we should stop with the ' necessary truths.' 
And I urge that if by one method a fact (under investiga- 
tion in pari materia, of course) appears ultimate, which 
by another is easily susceptible of further analysis, then 
the latter method is logically superior. And I contend 
also that the so-called a priori truths do not look ultimate, 
and that it is highly disadvantageous to treat them as 
such : I am preparing to contend that upon proper 
investigation they turn out to be certainly derivative, and 
that a knowledge of their ancestry will only increase the 
regard and affection we all feel for them. 

It appears, then, that if a priori truth be taken as 
psychical fact, it is arbitrary to treat it as ultimate, and 
that we have every motive to connect it with the rest 
of our mental constitution. We have thereby completed 
the proof that the apriorist account of our axiomatic 

1 Critique of Pure Reason, § 3, s.f. 

2 Kant supports an erroneous doctrine by downright psychological blunders. 
Thus he asserts that he can ' think ' empty Space and Time, but not objects out 
of Space and Time. If we resolve the ambiguity of ' think,' it will appear (a) 
that both the objects and the 'pure intuitions' are alike conceivable, and (b) that 
they are alike unimaginable. But Kant contrasts the unimaginableness of the 
objects with the conceivableness of the intuitions to make the latter seem 'prior.' 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 83 

first principles is invalid, in whichever way it is con- 
sistently taken. 

§ 23. But then it never is consistently taken. Neither 
in Kant nor in any of his successors is either interpretation 
of the a priori consistently adhered to. When objections 
are raised against the manifestly fictitious nature of its 
psychological foundations, all connection with psychology 
is indignantly disavowed. If, on the strength of this 
disavowal, the whole theory of knowledge is treated as a 
pretty structure which need comply only with logical 
canons of formal consistency, the actual reality and de 
facto use of the axioms is thrust down our throats. 

And the worst of it is that this duplicity of attitude is 
unavoidable. For it is in truth essential to the whole 
epistemological point of view. There is no room for a 
separate theory of knowledge with a peculiar standpoint, 
if we assign to psychology and logic the whole field that 
each of them can and ought to occupy. 1 In the so-called 
theory of knowledge the primary problem is psychological ; 
it is a question of the correctest and most convenient de- 
scription of what actually occurs in acts of knowing, i.e. a 
question of psychological fact. To logic on the other hand 
it appertains to estimate the value of all these cognitive 
processes : all questions as to whether the judgments that 
claim truth actually attain it, as to how cognitions may 
be rendered consistent, may realise the purposes which we 
have in knowing, may contribute to the ideals we set before 
ourselves in knowing, fall into the province of the science 
which aims at systematising our cognitions into a coherent 
body of truth. Between these two what remains for epis- 
temology to do ? From what point of view, and with what 
purpose is it to treat knowledge, if both the facts and their 
valuation are already otherwise provided for ? It is not 
a normative science like logic, and it is not descriptive 
science like psychology. And the ' critical ' question — 
how do we know ? — important though it is in itself, surely 

1 I do not of course maintain that either science does this at present. It is 
just because they are not clear as to the character and relations of their re- 
spective standpoints that they leave a sort of no man's land around their border 
line, for hybrids like epistemology to squat on. 



84 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

does not suffice to found a science. For the question 
cannot be answered unless it is asked on the basis of 
definite facts and with a definite aim in view. And 
whenever it is answered, the answer will always be found 
to be in terms either of psychology or of logic. 

§24. As the outcome of our criticism of the two 
current theories of the nature of our axioms we have 
arrived at the conclusion that neither the apriorist nor 
the empiricist account is tenable. Both have proved 
unsatisfactory ; the former because it represented the 
axioms as mere brute facts of our mental organisation 
(either entirely disconnected or connected only among 
themselves), the latter as the fictitious imprints of a 
psychologically impossible experience on a purely passive 
mind. 

At bottom the failure of both accounts springs from 
the same source. Both are infected with an intellectualism 
which is a libel on our nature, and leads them to take 
too narrow a view of its endowment. Because of this 
common intellectualism they fail to realise the central fact 
which we always encounter so soon as we abandon the 
abstract standpoints of the lower sciences and try to 
conceive our relation to our experience as a whole, the 
fact that the living organism acts as a whole. Or to bring 
out separately the aspects of this central fact which 
empiricism and apriorism severally misinterpret, we may 
say that the organism is active and the organism is one. 

Empiricism, with its fiction of the tabula rasa, fails 
to appreciate the first aspect ; to see that, even in its 
reactions on its environment, the organism is active, 
reacting in a mode decided by its own nature and guided 
by its aspirations towards a harmony of its experience. 
Its whole attitude is one of volition and desire, which is 
ultimately a yearning for the Apocalypse of some 
unearthly ideal of harmonious equilibration in its whole 
experience, and for the attainment of this end the whole 
intellectual apparatus is a means. 1 

1 Of course this has not wholly escaped the notice of philosophers even in former 
days, and so we may remind ourselves of Spinoza's conatus in suo esse perseve?-are. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 85 

In short, the Trpwrov ifrevSos of the old empiricism 
is to have failed to recognise this fact of living activity 
and its bearing on the growth and constitution of 
the mind. 

Again the organism is one and reacts as a whole. 
This is what apriorism fails to appreciate. In the fierce 
struggle for existence we need all our forces, and require 
a compact control of all our resources to survive. The 
organism, therefore, cannot afford to support a dis- 
interested and passionless intelligence within it, which 
hovers unconcerned above the bloodstained battlefields 
of progress, or even sucks a ghoulish and parasitic 
sustenance from the life-blood of practical striving. 
©ecopta must not be separated from irpafys, but related 
to it as means to end ; thought must be conceived as 
an outgrowth of action, knowledge of life, intelligence of 
will, while the brain which has become an instrument of 
intellectual contemplation must be regarded as the 
subtlest, latest, and most potent organ for effecting 
adaptations to the needs of life. 1 

Thus the irpcorov tyevSos of apriorism is to take our 
intelligence in abstraction from its biological and psycho- 
logical setting, from its history, from its aim, and from 
the function which it performs in the economy of our 
nature. It perpetrates a ^copta-fios between knowing and 

of Schopenhauer's Will -to -live, nay of Herbart's account of sensations as 
self- maintenances of the soul. At the present day, voluntarism bids fair to 
prevail over intellectualism, having obtained the support of men like James, 
Wundt, Ward, Sigwart, Stout, Paulsen, Renouvier, etc. Since this was written 
the recently published remains of Nietzsche ( Wille zur Macht, iii. I. 1901) have 
made it manifest that he also conceived our axioms as postulates transformed 
into ' truths ' by their usefulness, and that I might have quoted from him some 
telling phrases to this effect. 

To all this even Mr. Bradley's reiterated asseverations {Mind, N. S. , No. 41, 
pp. 7, 9, etc. ) that he "cannot accept " principles which he sees to be subversive of 
the dogmatic assumptions of his whole philosophy hardly seem a sufficient counter- 
poise. 

1 Of course this doctrine does not involve a denial of the existence (though 
it does of the rationality) of a ' pure ' or ' disinterested ' love of knowledge ' for 
its own sake. ' All our functions are liable to perversion and so as a psychological 
fact, there may also occur such a perversion of the cognitive instinct ; nay, history 
would even seem to show that it may persist and even be strengthened in the 
course of evolution. But then the explanation probably is that ' useless ' 
knowledge is not nearly so useless as its votaries suppose, and that in the minds 
which are capable of it the love for it is connected with other mental capacities 
which are both useful and valuable. 



86 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

feeling which renders both impotent and their de facto 
union unintelligible. 

But when we try to grasp experience as a whole, we 
must set ourselves above the encumbering abstractions 
of a psychological classification that has transgressed the 
limits of its validity. By conceiving the axioms as 
essentially postulates, made with an ultimately practical 
end, we bridge the gap that has been artificially 
constructed between the functions of our nature, and 
overcome the errors of intellectualism. We conceive the 
axioms as arising out of man's needs as an agent, as 
prompted by his desires, as affirmed by his will, in a 
word, as nourished and sustained by his emotional and 
volitional nature. 1 It is manifest that we thereby knit 
together the various factors in our nature in a far closer 
and more intimate union than had previously seemed 
possible. Our nature is one, and however we distinguish, 
we must not be beguiled into forgetting this, and 
substituting a part for the whole. And, correspondingly, 
we open out the prospect of a systematic unification of 
experience of a far completer and more satisfactory 
character than can be dreamt of by an intellectualist philo- 
sophy. For just as the unity to which we may (and 
indeed must) now aspire is no longer merely that of the 
frigid abstraction called the ' pure ' intellect, but includes 

1 I am not here concerned with the intra -psychological questions as to the 
number and nature of the psychic 'elements,' as to whether special volitional 
or affective processes must be recognised in psychology. For the question 
cannot be answered until it has been settled what is to be the purpose of the 
psychological description. Like all conceptions, the meaning and validity of 
those of psychology are relative to the use to which they are put, and in the 
abstract they have only potential meaning. As Dr. Stout well puts it (p. 10), 
one "cannot be right or wrong without reference to some interest or purpose," 
and before bespeaking their readers' attention for the details of their classifications, 
psychologists should above all make it clear what they propose to do with them. 
Now I do not doubt that it is quite possible, and for certain purposes even con- 
venient, to devise descriptions in purely intellectual terms, which entirely dispense 
with the conceptions of volition, of agency, and even of feeling. Only of course it 
must not be imagined that any such descriptions are final and sacrosanct. They 
are purely methodological, and their validity extends as far as their usefulness. 
And the question arises whether they can be used for a purpose like that which 
we have in view. If not, we are entitled to describe differently. For it cannot 
be too soon or too strongly emphasised that there is no intrinsic or absolute 
truth or falsehood about any of our assumptions, apart from the manner of 
their workinsr. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 87 

and satisfies the will and emotions, so the corresponding 
unity of the cosmos will not be a purely intellectual 
formality (such as every world must possess ex vi 
definitionis), but a complete harmony of our whole 
experience. 

§25. It is a curious fact that in passing from the 
a priori to the postulate we can appeal to the authority 
of the same Kant whose characteristic doctrine of an 
independent theory of knowledge we have been compelled 
to reject. For Kant, in accordance with his peculiar 
greatness, which his critics' very criticisms have ever 
recoiled to recognise, became partly and tardily aware 
of the fatal error of his intellectualism and of the 
impossibility of accommodating the whole of life on 
the basis prescribed by the Critique of Pure Reason. 
After constructing for the ' Pure Reason ' a fearful and 
wonderful palace of varieties, full of dungeons for 
insoluble antinomies, dispossessed sciences and incarcer- 
ated ideals, haunted and pervaded by the sombre mystery 
of the Noiimenon, he came upon the problem of practical 
life and found himself unable to organise the moral order 
similarly, i.e. without reference to the demands which we 
make upon experience. 

Hence he was constrained to rationalise conduct by the 
assumption of ethical postulates, which boldly encroached 
and trespassed on the forbidden domain of the unknowable, 
and returned thence laden with rich spoil — God, Freedom, 
and Immortality. 

This achievement is too often underrated, because 
it seems to have cost Kant so little — merely a decree 
for the creation of one more hardly-noticed addition to 
the lengthy list of faculties, yclept the Practical Reason, 
conjured into existence ad hoc, and apparently as 
obedient as the rest to her author's word. 

But in reality the consequences of enunciating the 
principle of the postulate are far more momentous, and 
with a little reflection, it soon appears that Kant has 
evoked a force which he cannot curb or confine within 
the borders of his system. The immediate consequence 



88 F. C. S. SCHILLER u 

of admitting ethical postulates which outflank the 
' critical ' negations of the Pure Reason, is a conflict 
between the Pure Reason, which had denied the 
possibility of knowing the subjects of the Postulates, and 
the Practical Reason, which insists that we must 
practically believe and act on these tabooed dogmas. 
Kant essays indeed to delimitate an arbitrary and 
unscientific frontier between their domains, based upon 
psychologically untenable hairsplitting between knowledge 
and belief, 1 but the most indulgent reader cannot but feel 
that the dualism of the Pure and the Practical Reason 
is intolerable and their antagonism irreconcilable, while 
the dual character which this doctrine imposes upon Kant 
as both the Cerberus and Herakles of the Noumenal 
world is calculated to bring ridicule both upon him and 
upon his system. 

In view of this fundamental incongruity between the 
organising principles of knowledge and action, one of 
two expedients had to be adopted. The first is that 
preferred by the main body of Kantians to whom the true 
and epochmaking Kant is the writer of the first Critique. 2 
They regarded the Practical Reason as a bit of a joke 
and accounted for Kant's subsequent recantation of his 
' critical ' results either wittily like Heine, 3 or dully, like 
— but no ! too many have written on the subject for me 
to mention names ! 

The faithful few who tried to balance themselves in 
the unstable equilibrium of Kant's actual position, who 
believed his assurances as to the supremacy of the 
Practical over the Theoretic Reason and its speculative 
impotence, were left in a sad perplexity. They accepted 
the dogma, without venturing to define it, and were 

1 How can one prevent one's knowledge and one's belief from affecting each 
other ? If we think at all, either the knowledge will render impossible the prac- 
tical belief, or a conviction will arise that a belief we constantly act on , which 
permeates our whole being and never fails us, is true. Personally indeed I 
should say that such was the origin and ratification of all truth. Conversely, 
a belief which is foredoomed to remain a mere belief soon ceases to be acted 
on, i.e. to be a belief in any real sense at all. The history of religions is full 
of deplorable examples. 

2 Or rather of its dominant doctrine. 

3 Philosophic in Deutschland. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 89 

troubled with an uneasy consciousness that it would not 
bear thinking out. 

Even here, however, there was a notable exception. 
Fichte, with the enterprise and courage of youth, took 
the Practical Reason seriously in hand, and combining 
the doctrine of its supremacy with Kant's hints as to a 
common root of the two Reasons, 1 proceeded to posit 
the Self as an ' absolutes Sollen,' whence were to be 
deduced both the Not -Self and the practical and 
theoretical activities. The whole construction of the 
Wissenschaftslekre, however, proceeds in a to7to9 virepovpd- 
vlo<; which is too high for my humbler and concreter 
purpose — I mention it merely as a partial anticipation 
of the second and sounder way of conceiving the 
relations of the Practical and the Theoretical Reason to 
which I now proceed. 

It is impossible to acquiesce in Kant's compromise 
and to believe by the might of the Practical Reason in 
what the Theoretic Reason declares to be unknowable. 
For if the suprasensible and noumenal does not really 
exist, it is both futile and immoral to tell us to believe 
in it on moral grounds ; the belief in it is an illusion, 
and will fail us in the hour of our direst need. If the 
belief in the postulates is to have any moral or other 
value, it must first of all be used to establish the reality of 
the objects in which we are bidden to believe. We cannot 
act as if the existence of God, freedom, and immortality 
were real, if at the same time we know that it is hopelessly 
inaccessible and indemonstrable. We must therefore 
choose ; we must either trust the Theoretical or the 
Practical Reason (unless, indeed, we are to conclude 
with the sceptic that both alike are discredited by their 
conflict). 

If we choose to abide by the former, the undeniable 
fact of the moral consciousness will not save the postulates 
of the Practical Reason from annihilation. It may postu- 
late as it pleases, as pathetically or ridiculously as it 
likes, its desire shall not be granted to it, and it will 

4 E.g. in the introduction to the Critique of Judgment. 



go F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

prove nothing. By postulating the inadmissible it merely 
discredits itself. To the plea that the moral life must 
live and feed upon the substance of unverifiable hopes, 
Science must ruthlessly reply u je rCen vois pas la necessite." 
If then the moral life demands freedom, and freedom be 
an impossibility, the moral life must inexorably be crushed ; 
Kant is der Alles-zermalmende, as Heine thought, and 
nothing more. 

If on the other hand the Practical Reason be really 
the higher, if it really has the right to postulate and 
ethical postulates are really valid, then we really stand 
committed to far more than Kant supposed. Postulation 
must be admitted to be capable of leading to knowledge, 
nay, perhaps even to amount to knowledge, and indeed 
the thought will readily occur that it lies at the very 
roots of knowledge. For of course postulation cannot 
be confined to ethics. The principle, if valid, must be 
generalised and applied all round to the organising 
principles of our life. The Theoretic Reason will in this 
case be rendered incapable of contesting the supremacy 
of the Practical Reason by being absorbed by it and 
shown to be derivative. Thus postulation is either not 
valid at all, or it is the foundation of the whole theoretic 
superstructure. 

We stand committed, therefore, to the assertion that 
in the last resort it is our practical activity that gives 
the real clue to the nature of things, while the world as 
it appears to the Theoretic Reason is secondary — a view 
taken from an artificial, abstract and restricted standpoint, 
itself dictated by the Practical Reason and devised for 
the satisfaction of its ends. 

But to carry through this programme the price must 
be paid. The Critique of Pure Reason must be not 
merely revised, but re-written. It must be re-written in 
the light of the principle of the Postulate. Or as Prof. 
Ward has excellently put it, Kant's three Critiques must 
be combined into one. 1 The simplest thing of all, 
however, is to proceed independently to show in what 

1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 133. The whole passage is admirable. 



n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 91 

manner our fundamental axioms are postulated, now 
that we may be held to have exhibited the necessity of 
the principle and its historical justification. 1 

IV 

§26. We have already incidentally discovered some 
of the chief characteristics of the Postulate, such as its 
universality and necessity (§ 11), its experimental char- 
acter (8§ 5, 8, 11), its psychological origin from practical 
needs, its function in holding together the intellectual and 
practical sides of our nature and developing the former 
out of the latter (§§ 24, 25). But it will not be amiss to 
consider some further points of a general character before 
proceeding actually to trace the development of specimen 
postulates into axioms. 

The first point which perhaps will bear further 
emphasis is that mere postulating is not in general enough 
to constitute an axiom. The postulation is the expression 
of the motive forces which impel us towards a certain 
assumption, an outcome of every organism's unceasing 
struggle to transmute its experience into harmonious and 
acceptable forms. The organism cannot help postulating, 
because it cannot help trying (§ 5), because it must act or 
die, and because from the first it will not acquiesce in less 
than a complete harmony of its experience. It therefore 
needs assumptions it can act on and live by, which will 
serve as means to the attainment of its ends. These 
assumptions it obtains by postulating them in the hope 
that they may prove tenable, and the axioms are thus the 
outcome of a Will-to-believe which has had its way, which 
has dared to postulate, and, as William James has so 
superbly shown, has been rewarded for its audacity by 
finding that the world granted what was demanded. 2 

1 For its relation to Aristotelianism, cf. the art. on ' Useless Knowledge ' in 
Mind, N.S., No. 42. 

2 Practical postulation is the real meaning of his much misconstrued doctrine 
of the ' Will to believe.' It is not so much exhortation concerning what we ought 
to do in the future as analysis of what we have done in the past. And the critics 
of the doctrine have mostly ignored the essential addition to the ' will to believe," 
viz. ' at your risk, ' which leaves ample scope for the testing of the assumed 
belief by experience of its practical results. 



92 F. C. S. SCHILLER h 

But the world does not always grant our demands. 
The course of postulation does not always run smooth. 
We cannot tell beforehand whether, and to what extent, a 
postulate can be made to work. Compliance with some 
of our demands is only extorted from the refractory 
material of our ' world,' by much effort and ingenuity and 
repeated trial. In other cases the confirmation we seek 
for remains incomplete, and the usefulness of the postulate 
is proportionately restricted. Sometimes again we may 
even be forced to desist from a postulate which proves 
unworkable. 

It follows that we may find postulates (or attempts 
at such) in every stage of development. They may 
rise from the crudest cravings of individual caprice to 
universal desires of human emotion ; they may stop short 
at moral, aesthetic, and religious postulates, whose validity 
seems restricted to certain attitudes of mind, or aspects 
of experience, or they may make their appeal to all 
intelligence as such ; their use as principles of the various 
sciences may be felt to be methodological, or they may 
have attained to a position so unquestioned, useful, and 
indispensable, in a word so axiomatic, that the thought of 
their being conceived otherwise never enters our heads. 

But even the most exalted of these apyah avairoheiKToi 
T<hv fir) ivhe^ofxevwv aX\w<; e^etv differ from their humble 
relatives in human wishes not in the mode of their genesis, 
but in their antiquity, in the scope of their usefulness, in 
the amount and character of the confirmation which they 
have received in the course of experience, in a word, in 
their working and not in their origin. They are the 
successful survivors in the process of sifting or ' selection ' 
which has power also over the products of our intellectual 
striving. 

But it ill becomes them on this account to give them- 
selves airs and to regard their position as immutable and 
unassailable. For in many cases they retain their hold 
over our affections only faute de mieux. They are the 
best assumptions we can work with, but not the best we 
can conceive. And some one may some day discover a 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 93 

way to work with what are now unsupported postulates, 
and so raise them to axiomatic rank. Thus whatever 
axioms we may at any time employ are, and ever remain 
relative to the nature of our desires and our experience, 
and so long as changes may occur in either, inexhaustible 
possibilities of corresponding developments must be ad- 
mitted in the list of our axiomatic principles. An 
emotional postulate may become the guiding principle of 
a new science, a methodological principle may become 
superfluous and be discarded or be superseded by a better, 
a primitive desire may die down and cease to nourish a 
postulate, nay even a full blown axiom may be conceived 
as becoming otiose under changed conditions of experience. 
While our empiricism is thus too radical, and our 
trust in experience too honest, to permit our theory to 
assign to any axiom an absolutely indefeasible status, 
we must yet admit that practically the possibility of 
modifying them is one that may safely be neglected. 
The great axioms or postulates are so ineradicably 
intertwined with the roots of our being, have so intim- 
ately permeated every nook and cranny of our Weltan- 
schauung, have become so ingrained in all our habits of 
thought, that we may practically rely on them to stand 
fast so long as human thought endures. For apart from 
the fact that it would be gratuitous to suppose a revolution 
in our experience sufficient to upset them, they are 
protected by our laziness. To think always costs an 
effort, and the effort of thought required to undo the 
structure of mind which has grown up with the ages 
would be so gigantic that we should shrink with a 
shudder from the very thought thereof. And all for 
the sake of what ? Merely to show that the mental 
order was constructed bit by bit by postulation and 
might be constructed otherwise ! And would it not be 
sheer insanity to upset the authority of the axioms in use 
unless we were prepared to substitute others of superior 
value ? There is therefore in general little prospect of 
revolutionary plots against the validity of axioms. The 
enterprise would too much resemble an attempt by a coral 



94 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

polyp to cut itself adrift from its reef and to start de 
novo. So we do as the corals do and build on the 
corpses of our ancestors, hoping that if they were right 
we also shall profit by following suit, that if they were 
wrong, the consciousness of our wrongness will at least be 
borne in upon us with a less painful promptitude than if 
we had set out to go wrong on our own account. 

§ 27. It follows as a matter of course, and will 
readily be comprehended, that, if our axioms have the 
origin alleged, if postulation pervades our whole mental 
life and forms the nisus formativus of mental development, 
no exhaustive, or even systematic, table of axioms can, 
or need, be drawn up. In principle their number and 
nature must depend on our experience and psychical 
temperament. They will radiate from human personality 
as their centre, and their common service in ministering 
to its needs will bestow upon them sufficient unity to 
debar us from attempts to force them into artificial 
systems which at best can result only in sham ' deduc- 
tions ' of the rational necessity of the actual, while 
making no provision for the possibilities of future 
development. 

We may therefore absolve ourselves from the supposed 
duty of giving a 'deduction of the categories,' or even 
an exhaustive list of axioms and postulates. This is 
the more fortunate as it justifies us in considering only 
such select specimens of the growth of postulates and 
their development into axioms, as may suffice to illustrate 
the principle, or prove particularly interesting, and enables 
us to save much time and spare much weariness. 



V 

§ 28. Which of our fundamental axioms I select 
therefore, does not matter much, any more than the 
order in which they are treated ; but as I am anxious 
not to incur the charge of shirking difficulties, I shall 
begin with tracing the genesis of one which is perhaps 
the most difficult, as it is certainly one of the most 



„ AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 95 

fundamental and axiomatic — viz. the basis of all thinking 
in the strict sense of the term, the Principle of Identity. 

Not, of course, that I propose to derive it out of 
nothing. I must entirely disavow the Hegelian (or hyper- 
Hegelian ?) ambition of conjuring all Being into existence 
out of Not-being by a Dialectical Process working in 
vacuo ; I have not even got the whole of concrete reality 
up my sleeve to insinuate bits thereof into my conclusions, 
whenever and wherever my reader's attention has been 
relaxed by some tortuous obscurity of argumentation. I 
prefer honestly to start from what may be taken to be, so 
far as psychology can describe it, matter of psychical fact. 
For I hold that epistemological speculation like every 
other, must take something factual for granted, if it is not 
to be vain imagining, and defy those who contest my 
presuppositions to state the alternatives they are in a 
position to offer. If on this account a claim be advanced 
that my initial basis of psychical fact is a priori, that is, 
prior to the axiom to be derived, I make no objection. 
I am content that it should be called so, if the phrase 
comforts anybody, and if I am permitted to point out (1) 
that such priority is only relative, pro hac vice, and for the 
purposes of the present inquiry, (2) it is admitted to lie 
below the level of what can properly be called thought. 
For I wish to make it quite plain that the psychical fact 
from which I propose to start, is on what I may perhaps 
best call the sentient level of consciousness, i.e. involves only 
a consciousness which feels pleasure and pain, which 
strives and desires without as yet clear self-consciousness 
or conception of objects. 

In so doing, I assume, of course, the existence of 
consciousness or sentiency as a datum, and abstain from 
the alluring expedient of conducting my whole plea on 
the more concrete plane of biological discussion, obvious 
and seductive as it might appear to start thence and to 
argue (1) that the genesis — by a so-called 'accidental 
variation ' — of the concomitance of psychical with 
physical process was of great survival-value to the lump 
of matter which first happened to find itself alive and 



96 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

dimly conscious ; (2) that subsequently great advantages 
accrued to organisms in which these mental processes 
cohered and coalesced and became continuous and 
centralised, until they culminated in self-consciousness. 
There is a fatal facility and engaging modernity about 
arguments of this sort, and they bring out an important 
aspect of the truth. For it is not too much to say, that 
every step in the development of our axioms, including 
even the steps hypothetically conceived to precede con- 
sciousness, could be plausibly formulated in terms of 
survival-value. But though it might be easy in this way 
to enlist the support of the biologically-minded, I prefer 
to conduct the argument on a higher and more philo- 
sophic plane, in order to avoid even the appearance of 
the varepov irporepov which is inevitably involved in 
every derivation of consciousness. 

In assuming consciousness, moreover, we are bound to 
assume also the characteristic features whereby it is 
psychologically described, e.g. its continuity, coherence, 
conativeness, and purposiveness. It should be observed 
further that in pointing out these characteristics of 
consciousness, we are not attempting to define 
consciousness. For why should we court failure by 
propounding an inevitably inadequate formula, to contain 
and constrain that which embraces all existence, 
generates all formulas, uses them and casts them aside in 
its victorious development ? Whoever is possessed of 
consciousness himself will recognise to what in him 
the description of consciousness refers ; unless he were 
capable of this, the most exhaustive definitions would 
impinge on him in vain and without conveying a glimmer 
of meaning. That consciousness is a psychic fact 
therefore I shall assume ; what it is, I must leave to my 
reader's own consciousness to inform him. I have then 
in consciousness a rrrov <tt<o of psychic fact beyond which 
we neither can nor need go. 

Nor I think need we allow the objection to perturb 
us that our present conception of consciousness may be 
miserably inadequate. In view of its continuing develop- 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES - 97 

ment in the course of experience the suggestion is 
probably true ; but we do not need the adequate concep- 
tion of consciousness, which could be reached only in the 
seventh heaven, and there might have become superfluous. 
And in any case our ignorance of what the ulterior 
development of consciousness may portend, is no reason 
for refusing to recognise in it the actual features which 
are relevant to our purpose. 

§ 29. Now among the factual features implicit in all 
consciousness, though perhaps hard to distinguish in its 
lower forms and not as yet completely expressed in any 
that we have so far reached, is an identical self — or what 
we are subsequently able so to designate. By this I do 
not of course mean anything lofty and metaphysical, but 
merely a convenient description of certain psychical facts. 
I have no quarrel with the psychologists who argue 
against an antiquated view of futile and unknowable soul- 
substance, and insist that the only self they can recognise 
is just the implicit ' owning ' of all conscious processes. 
If the coherence and continuity of conscious processes 
can under the proper conditions develop into explicit 
self- consciousness, that is enough ; and so long as the 
psychologists are able and eager to tell us all about the 
psychogenesis of the self, I see no reason why their 
accounts should not be referred to with gratitude and 
respect. 

But my problem is not one of origin, but of the origin 
of validity ; i.e. assuming this conscious self to have been 
developed, I have to trace out how it proceeds to the 
conception and postulation of identity. The felt self- 
identity of consciousness, which, however it arises, is a 
psychical fact, is, I contend, the ultimate psychical basis 
for raising the great postulate of logical identity, which is 
the first and greatest of the principles of discursive thought 
and introduces order into the chaos of presentations and 
analyses the avyKe-^v/xivov of primitive experience. 

Now this achievement is not a ' necessity of pure 
thought' so much as of practical life; and without postula- 
tion it would remain impossible. The unceasing flow of 

H 



9 8 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

like impressions by itself would not suggest the recurrence 
of what has preserved its identity in change ; nor would 
even its felt likenesses suffice to engender a perception 
of identity. 1 To obtain identity we must first desire it 
and demand it ; and this demand, though it would be 
impossible if we did not feel ourselves to be identical 
selves and fruitless if we could not discover such around 
us, is a distinct step beyond anything given in passive 
experiencing. 

Thus the conception of identity is a free creation of a 
postulating intelligence which goes beyond its experience 
to demand the satisfaction of its desires. But it must 
have been the felt sameness of the continuous conscious 
life that suggested the clue to the recognition of the same 
in the recurrence of the like. 

§ 30. Edwin meets Angelina in her winter furs whom 
he admired last summer in fig leaves ; he recognises her 
identity in the differences of her primitive attire. That 
such things as the persistence of identity through change 
should be, and what they mean, he could learn only from 
the immediate experience of his own identity. That they 
are is his postulate, a postulate that fills his heart with the 
delicious hope that Angelina will smile on him as be- 
witchingly as before. Why should I introduce sordidness 
into this romance, by dwelling also on the coarsely 
practical advantages of recognising objects in one's sur- 
roundings ? 

Yet it is surely plain that the recognition of the same 
amid variety of circumstance is advantageous ; and if 
desiring it to be true, because he felt his whole happiness 
depended on it, Edwin made bold to postulate it, he well 
deserved the rich rewards which poured in as an over- 
whelming experience of its working confirmed his postulate. 

1 It seems to me clear that psychologically perception of likeness is ultimate, 
anterior to identity, and incapable of being reduced to it. The analysis of likeness 
into ' partial identity ' is a logical procedure which occurs when we manipulate 
the psychical fact with a logical purpose and try to conceive the likeness. But 
then conception is admittedly a matter of thought, and thought rests on the 
principle of identity. What the tautology of the Hegelian definition ( ' identity 
is identity in difference') is struggling to express (or conceal?) is really the ttse of 
logical conception in manipulating the felt likenesses. Cf. the discussion in 
Mind between Prof. James and Mr. Bradley (N.S. , Nos. 5-8). 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 99 

We, of course are far removed from the scene of this 
primitive idyll, and have long since ceased to notice what 
a postulate identity was, and for the matter of that still 
is. We need a world of philosophic quibbling to bring 
before our eyes the fact that strict identity never yet 
was found by land or sea, but is always and everywhere 
a construction of our mind, wade by voluntary concentration 
on the essential and rejection of the irrelevant. 1 

Nor, of course, did Edwin know this. He had pos- 
tulated under the impulsion of practical need, without 
knowing what he did. The enormity of the logical 
consequences of his act was hidden from him and only 
gradually revealed. Still less did Angelina know that 
she had become the mate of the first animal rationale. 

Edwin, again, could not foresee that his original 
postulate would not suffice, and that stupendous efforts 
of abstraction were still before him if he would complete 
the postulate of identity and attain to the purity of its 
present logical use. 

In recognising Angelina he had of course (although 
he realised it not) construed her identity upon the model 
of his own. But the concrete given identity of self- 
consciousness is a slender basis for the construction of 
the logical ideal ; indeed it even proves unequal to the 
requirements of a social life, and needs on this account to 
be sublimated and idealised into a concept that transcends 
the given. 

The concretely identical, alas, changes in the flow of 
differences ! Edwin has grown bald and Angelina 
wrinkled, and I grieve to say, they often quarrel. They 
are no longer what they were when each succumbed to 
the other's charms, and identity seems dubious and a 
fraud. Eheu fugaces Postwne ! Postulate I The cure is 
a hair of the dog that bit you. Edwin must postulate 
once more, must postulate a more permanent self which 
rises superior to such mischances of a mortal life, and, 

1 If identity were ever found, Dr. Hodder's amusing strictures {Adversaries 
of the Sceptic, pp. 116-117) on Mr. Bradley's "identity of indiscernibles " would 
be fatal to every use of the principle. 

LofC. 



ioo F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

ever at its best, feeds on ambrosia and drains the nectared 
cups with changeless gods ! 

Gods, did I escape my own notice saying ? What 
are gods and how do they arise ? As men, but greater ! 
Projections of ideals which the actual suggests, but seems 
to trample under foot ! The sign-posts clearly point to 
the religious postulates and a track which here diverges 
from our own. 

§ 31. For though it would be fascinating to trace 
the course of postulation to which religious concep- 
tions owe their birth, we must follow the dry and dusty 
road of logical postulation by whose side the hardiest 
flowers of the boldest rhetoric can scarce contrive to 
blossom. A constant and unchanging self is needed 
not merely to satisfy what subsequently develops into 
the religious instinct, but also in order to yield a trust- 
worthy standard of comparison for the purposes of 
everyday life. If Edwin likes his mammoth steak well 
done to-day and underdone to-morrow, no woman can 
live with him. A stable standard of reference in our 
judgments is an urgent practical need. Hence the ideal 
of absolute identity begins to dawn upon the logical 
horizon, and it is recognised that the possibility of mean- 
ing depends on its constancy, and that perfect constancy 
could be realised only by perfect knowledge. 

And, not otherwise, recognition leads on to cognition, 
and cognition to the same postulate of conceptual identity 
or constancy. The process which took the recurrence of 
a similar presentation to mean that of the same individual, 
will bear extension to the resemblances of natural kinds. 
From recognising individuals we proceed to recognise 
species, a task made easier by the psychological careless- 
ness which overlooks individual differences. 1 Now every 
step in this process is a training in abstraction. At first 
even Edwin could not recognise his Angelina without 
divesting her (in thought) of her enveloping differences. 

1 It is conceivable, indeed, that this process actually preceded in practical 
urgency, and therefore, in time, the recognition of individuality. But that would 
not impair the argument, for under some conditions the discrimination of 
individuals is unnecessary and all individuals are practically the same. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 101 

But by the time he can discern in their manifold disguises 
the surrounding objects that are useful or dangerous, he 
has a pretty sound working control of that weapon of 
analysis which we now call the principle of identity. 

No doubt it still is, and long remains, an evvXov etSo? 
— pure logic not becoming needful so soon as pure 
mathematics — but sooner or later some one was sure to 
ask what was this universal ' man ' which was so glibly 
predicated of white, black, yellow, and brown. And then 
of course the v\r] would be in the fire, and a bloodless 
ballet of philosophers would commence to dance round 
the unearthly conflagration. 

S 32. I forgot to mention, by the way, that soon after 
recognising identity in Angelina, Edwin had (of course) 
invented language. As to why the expression of his 
emotions on that prehistoric occasion resulted in the 
euphonious sound of " Angelina," he can indeed state 
nothing intelligible. But by association's artful aid he 
got into the habit of venting this utterance whenever he 
saw her. And then one morning he not only said it, 
but meant it ! Prodigious ! the sound had become a 
symbol ! It puzzled him very much, and he had that, 
until then, unheard-of thing, a nervous headache, for 
three days afterwards, which puzzled him still more. 
He put it down to daemonic inspiration (a notable advance 
in theology !) and went on thinking. Then he proceeded 
to instruct Angelina, and after a painful process (to her !) 
got her to answer to her name. And, behold, when their 
children were born they all learned to talk, i.e. to apply 
similar and identifiable sounds to an indefinite plurality 
of similar objects. Which, of course, in those days was 
an immense advantage. And ever since the children of 
men have been the only anthropoids that could talk and 
impart ideas — whether they had them or not ! 

All this happened such a very long time ago that I 
cannot exactly tell you when, and have had (like Plato) 
to make a myth of it. Whether in so doing I have not 
condensed into a single myth what was really the gradual 
achievement of many generations of mortals it were 



102 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

pedantic to inquire. The illustration serves, I hope, to 
bring out the main point, viz. that the affirmation of 
identity, without which there is neither thought nor 
judgment, is essentially an act of postulation (more or 
less consciously felt to be such) which presupposes as its 
psychological conditio sine qua non the feeling of the self- 
identity and ' unity ' of consciousness. 

§33- The derivation of identity I have sketched also 
goes some way, I think, to explain why in real life men 
so long enjoyed immunity from the ravages of the predi- 
cation puzzle. Identity being a practical postulate, 
modelled on the immediacy of felt self-identity, the 
postulation of absolute conceptual identity developed very 
slowly, and there never was any practical danger lest the 
meaning of the postulate should be pressed into a form 
calculated to defeat its original purpose. The inherence 
of attributes in a substance, the relation of a thing to its 
qualities, are not as such practical problems, and the 
difficulties which the intellectual play of reflective idlers 
has discovered in them did not exist in practice. In 
practice the meaning of terms was defined by their use, 
and the will-o'-the-wisp of a 'truth' dissevered from 
utility had not yet been permitted to frustrate the very 
instinct of which it claimed to be the loftiest satisfaction, 
nor to eviscerate the conception of ' truth ' of its real 
meaning. 

And so tacit convention kept the identity postulated 
true to a sense that allowed of the possibility of predi- 
cation. 

Hence that .S should be 6" and yet also P, nay that it 
could be P, just because it was primarily S, seemed no 
more remarkable than that the self which was glutted 
with beef yesterday should to-day be hungry, and just 
because of this identity, should prepare once more to 
assume the predicate of ' beef-eater.' It would be vain 
therefore to impose on the logic of postulation with 
bogies of an identity excluding differences ; the calm 
reply would be that postulates need not, and must not, be 
pressed beyond the point at which they fulfil their 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 103 

purpose. An interpretation of identity therefore which 
excluded predication would stultify our supreme purpose 
in reasoning as completely as a failure to identify, and 
would therefore be invalid. 

And yet we should be equally stern in resisting the 
allurements to evade the difficulty by relaxing the 
strictness with which identity is postulated in every valid 
argument. To the objection that ' abstract identity ' 
would be the death of predication, because if A were 
perfectly and unalterably A it could never become any- 
thing else, the answer is plain. Abstract identity is never 
found, but has always to be made. It is made, there- 
fore, in whatever way and to whatever extent it is needed, 
and remains subservient to the purpose of its maker. It is 
a postulated ideal which works, though nature never quite 
conforms to it ; before it could be fully realised, the need to 
which it ministers, the necessity of unceasing predication 
which is forced upon us by the Becoming of the world, 
would have had to pass away ; and once we had transcended 
change, identity, together with the processes of discursive 
thinking which are built upon it, might safely be added to 
the weapons discarded by the spirit in its advance towards 
perfection. But as a matter of fact identity continues to 
be useful just because it continues to be a postulate which 
never is fully realised. It may therefore blandly be 
admitted that A is A is an impotent truism, so long as it 
is vividly realised that A shall be A is an active truth that 
remoulds the world. 

§34. It is in its limitations, perhaps, that the postu- 
latory nature of the principle of identity, and of the 
conceptual use of mental imagery based on it, appears 
most clearly. For, as has already been remarked, there 
ever remains a discrepancy between the identity of the 
real and the logical ideal, a discrepancy to which we have 
grown accustomed, a discrepancy on which the use 
of the concept depends, but which, indubitably, renders 
identity a postulate rather than a ' law.' 

For in strict fact nothing ever is, everything becomes, 
and turns our most conscientious predications into false- 



104 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

hoods. The real is here, there, and everywhere, until we 
stop breathless in our chase and point, gasping. The 
' eternal truths,' unable to sustain the pace, have long 
ceased to reside with us — if indeed they ever gladdened us 
with theophanies even in the Golden Age of Plato — and 
have gone down or up (one really cannot be precise about 
astronomical directions in these Copernican days) into the 
tottos vot]tos, where it is possible to preserve one's 
dignity without doing any work. In their stead we have 
craftily devised conventions, such as that becoming shall 
mean being, and that for our purposes relative identity may, 
under the proper precautions, serve as well as absolute. 
But we stand unalterably committed to the postulate that 
identity there shall be, though everywhere we have to 
make it and by force to fit it on the facts. And so we 
get on very nicely with truths, as with dresses, that last 
only for the occasion or for a season, and console ourselves 
with visions that in the end Being will absorb Becoming 
and impermanence cease from troubling and predication 
be completely true and unchanging and perfect and 
categorical. If by that time we have outgrown the very 
need of predication, it does not matter to us now ; for 
nothing of the sort is likely to happen to any of us for 
ever so long ! 

VI 

§35. The myth of Edwin and Angelina has reminded 
me (perchance by avdfivr/cns) of another of still more 
ancient date, and if I have obtained forgiveness for 
telling so much about them, I may venture to relate the 
story of another being whose name was Grumps. Or 
rather, that would have been his name, if names had then 
been invented. I cannot quite say who or what Grumps 
was, but he lived ever so long ago and was very stupid, 
very nearly as stupid as everybody else. He was so 
stupid that he did not know the difference between himself 
and other people, but still in his muddled way — he lived, 
I fancy, in the slime at the bottom of the sea — he wanted 
to be happy, though he did not know himself nor what 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 105 

his happiness could be. But one day (or night — it does 
not really matter which it was, — because there was no light) 
he made a mistake and got outside a jagged flint stone 
which he could not digest. It hurt him very much and 
he nearly died. But ever after his agony Grumps knew 
the difference between himself and other people, and 
whenever anything hurt him or happened not to his liking 
(which was very often) he put it down to the other people. 
For he felt sure he would never hurt himself. And it 
made such a difference to his way of living that he grew 
very big and fat. But everybody else was too stupid to 
know why. 

Which fable, being translated into the decent obscurity 
of technical language, means that the ( external ' world is 
a postulate, made to extrude inharmonious elements from 
consciousness, de jure if not de facto, in order to avoid 
ascribing them to the nature of the self. Not of course, 
that this is at first consciously so argued, or that the 
segregation of the two poles of the experience -process 
into Self and Not- Self need be conceived as arising 
otherwise than pari passu. But we may conceive that 
it is the felt unsatisfactoriness of experience which sug- 
gests the differentiation of Subject and Object and pos- 
tulation of the latter as an alien ' Other,' causing the 
unsatisfactoriness. 

The advantage and the confirmation are obvious as 
before. And if any one will not believe me, let him go 
to bed and dream ; he will find that there too he projects 
his dream world from himself and ascribes to it externality, 
just because, and in so far as, he is baffled by an experi- 
ence he cannot control. 

Contrariwise it may be conjectured that if we got to 
heaven (having forgotten our whole past) and found that 
everything took exactly the course desired, no sense of 
the ' otherness ' of our experience could grow up. We 
should either suppose that we were almighty, that every- 
thing was what it was because we desired it, or we should 
cease to make the distinction between self and ' other,' 
i.e. should cease to be self-conscious. 



io6 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

§36. The postulatory aspect of other important 
axioms I must pass over lightly. The principle of 
Contradiction may be taken as simply the negative side 
of that of Identity ; in demanding that A shall be itself, 
we demand also that it shall be capable of excluding 
whatever threatens its identity. Applied to propositions, 
it demands that we shall be enabled to avoid the jar of 
incongruous judgments ; but the volitional nature of this 
demand is clearly attested by the frequency with which 
contradictions are de facto entertained by minds which 
either do not allow them to come into actual conflict, or 
actually enjoy the conflict. The Principle of Excluded 
Middle similarly, demands that it shall be possible to 
make distinctions sharp and disjunctions complete, in 
order that we may thereby tame the continuous flux of 
experiences. But in both these cases (as before) our 
postulates are not precise transcriptions of fact ; they are 
valid because they work, because nature can be made to 
conform to them, even though not wholly. They derive 
therefore their real meaning and true validity from the 
fact that they are applicable to experience, that incom- 
patibles and strict alternatives are met with, that contrary 
and exclusive attributes are found. 

§ 37. I may here call attention to the fact that in 
scientific research the postulatory procedure of our intel- 
ligence is displayed in the formation of Hypotheses. A 
hypothesis is a suggestion we assume and (however 
tentatively) act on, in order to see whether it will work. 
It always proceeds from some degree of psychological 
interest ; for about that in which no one is interested 
no one frames even the most fleeting hypothesis. A 
real hypothesis therefore is never gratuitous ; it is pur- 
posive and aims at the explanation of some subject. 
In other words it presupposes a desire for its explana- 
tion and is framed so as to satisfy that desire. The 
desire for an answer stimulates us to put the question to 
nature and nature to the question. 1 We assume, that is, 
that the hypothesis is true, because it would be satisfactory 

1 Or, as Lady Welby says, it is the pressure of the anszver that puts the question. 



n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 107 

if it were, and then we try and see whether it is workable. 
If it is not, we are more or less disappointed, but try 
again ; if it is, it rapidly rises to be the theory of the 
phenomena under investigation, and may under favourable 
circumstances attain to axiomatic value for the purposes 
of the inquiry. A good example of this is afforded by 
the conception of , Evolution. This originated as a wild 
hypothesis suggested by remote analogies ; in the hands 
of Darwin it became a theory which correlated a vast 
number of facts ; and now its usefulness is so universally 
recognised that it is accepted without discussion as a 
methodological axiom which guides research in all the 
sciences concerned with the history of events. 

Now the fundamental part played by Hypothesis in 
the discovery of new truth is being more and more plainly 
admitted by logicians. Novelty neither arises by formal 
ratiocination in vacuo, as an apriorist logic seemed to 
imply, nor yet is it spontaneously generated by the mere 
congregation of facts, as logical empiricism strove to 
maintain. Facts must be interpreted by intelligence, but 
intelligence always operates upon the basis of previously 
established fact. The growth of knowledge is an active 
assimilation of the new by the old. Or in other words, 
our hypotheses are suggested by, and start from, the facts 
of already established knowledge, and then are tested by 
experience. We confront them with the new and dubious 
facts and try to work with them ; and upon the results of 
this trial their ultimate fate depends. 

Now this is exactly what we have seen to be our 
procedure in postulating. We must start from a psychical 
experience which suggests the postulate ( = the previous 
fact suggesting the hypothesis) ; we must use the postulate 
(or hypothesis) as a means to an end which appears 
desirable ; we must apply the postulate to experience (a 
postulate and a hypothesis not capable of and not in- 
tended for use are alike invalid) ; and the final validity of 
the postulate (or hypothesis) depends on the extent 
to which experience can be rendered congruous with it. 

May we not infer that the use of Hypothesis in the 



108 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

logic of induction confirms our assertion of the postu- 
latory origin of axioms ? Is it not the same process 
which now yields fresh truth which we supposed to have 
been active from the first and to have laid the foundations 
of knowledge ? And if it can now establish the validity 
of the truths it elicits, why should it not first of all have 
established its own validity by establishing the validity of 
our fundamental axioms ? 

8 38. The principle of Causation again is pretty 
plainly a postulate. Causation, as James says, 1 is an 
altar to an unknown god, a demand for something, we 
know not what, that shall enable us to break up and 
to control the given course of events. Now this demand 
may be satisfied in various ways at different times and 
for various purposes, in a manner which greatly conduces 
to the vitality of controversy. Historically, our original 
model for constructing the conception of cause is our 
immediate experience in moving our limbs, on the basis 
of which the far-famed ' necessary connection ' — which at 
bottom is only the conceptual translation of the feeling 
of ' having to ' — is postulated. This primitive conception 
of causation, however, does not prove adequate for all 
our later purposes, especially when, as is usually the 
case, it is misunderstood and mismanaged. So we 
proceed to other formulations of causality, which, however, 
are no less clearly dependent on our experiences and 
relative to our purposes. ' Cause ' means identity when 
we wish to construct the equations of physics and 
mechanics ; it means regular succession when we are 
content to view phenomena from without ; it involves 
real agency when, as rarely occurs on the plane of the 
natural sciences, 2 we desire to grasp the motive forces 
of phenomena from within. Every event shall have a 
cause — -in order that we may be able to produce it or 
to check its production. Similarly the principle of 

1 Principles of Psychology, ii. p. 671. 

2 The possible exception is biology, in which the Darwinian method |puts 
difficulties into the way of regarding organisms as automata whose psychic life 
may be neglected. For if psychic activity has no causal efficacy, why was it 
developed in a world controlled by the law of struggle for existence? 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 109 

sufficient Reason demands that everything shall be 
capable of reasoned connection with all things — i.e. we 
decline to live among disjecta membra of a universe. 

How intensely postulatory these axioms are, is best 
seen when we consider what is too often neglected, viz. 
the limits of their use. The unchanging is the uncaused ; 
no reason is required for that which is 'self-evident.' 
But, psychologically, everything is self-evident which 
provokes no question, and what alone would be absolutely 
self-evident would be the absolutely satisfactory. Thus 
the only complete logical truth would be one which left 
no room for further questions by reason of its absolute 
psychological satisfactoriness. And conversely nothing 
arouses the questioning spirit more readily than the 
unsatisfactory. As has well been said, there is a problem 
of evil, but not of good. It is precisely in so far, there- 
fore, as experience is unsatisfactory that we have need 
of a principle of Sufficient Reason. It has to be left, 
with so much of the panoply of practical life, at the 
gates of Heaven. 

Comprehended as a postulate, therefore, the principle 
of Sufficient Reason no longer exercises an unsympathis- 
ing tyranny of pure reason over reluctant desires ; it does 
not drive us to seek for reasons that can never satisfy 
without end ; it only enables us to assign a reason when- 
ever we will, and the situation seems to us to need one. 

The Xvcris of the airopia of the infinite regress of 
causes is similar. It means " you may go back as far 
as ever you will " ; it does not mean " you must go back, 
whether you will or not." As for the unchanging (or what 
is taken to be such) the causal demand has no power 
over it ; it has no cause because it has no changes with 
which it is practically necessary to grapple. 

§ 39- Upon the assumption of the existence of 
universal laws of nature, otherwise known as the Uni- 
formity of Nature, I may bestow a somewhat fuller 
treatment, for reasons which can perhaps be conjectured 
by those of my readers who have been engaged in 
philosophic instruction. 



no F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

To primitive man — we may suppose ourselves to have 
got down to semi-historical times — nature inevitably still 
appears very chaotic and uncomfortable. He desires an 
explanation of the circumstances that oppress him, and 
is prepared to clutch at any straw. He partially gratifies 
this desire by projecting as the ' causes ' of such happen- 
ings ' spirits ' naturally and necessarily conceived ex 
analogia kominis, and wild and malevolent enough to 
account for the chaos and the discomfort. 

But after all the chaos is not complete ; it is inter- 
spersed with gleams of uniformity. Though under the 
promptings of misplaced paternal pride, Helios may 
conceivably entrust his chariot to the unpractised hands 
of Phaethon, yet within the memory of the oldest in- 
habitant the sun has risen and set with regularity. So 
too a number of organic rhythms, breathing, cardiac 
pumping, digestion, hunger, etc., have by this time reached 
a regularity which can hardly be overlooked. There is 
therefore no lack of psychical experience to suggest 
regularity, and the whole force of association, driving the 
mind into habitual courses, disposes it to expect a re- 
currence of the familiar. 

Perfect regularity, therefore, can be postulated ; and 
the temptation to do so is great. For while no ameliora- 
tion of man's miserable state can be expected from the 
scientific caution that dares not step beyond the narrow 
bounds of precedent, the postulation of universal laws is 
fraught with infinite possibilities of power. If nature is 
regular, it can be trusted ; the future will resemble the 
past — at least enough to calculate it — and so our past 
experience will serve as guide to future conduct. There 
is, moreover, a glorious simplicity about calculating the 
future by the assumption that out of the hurly-burly of 
events in time and space may be extracted changeless 
formulas whose chaste abstraction soars above all reference 
to any ' where ' or ' when,' and thereby renders them 
blank cheques to be filled up at our pleasure with any 
figures of the sort. The only question is — Will Nature 
honour the cheque? Audentes Natura juvat — let us take 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES in 

our life in our hands and try ! If we fail, our blood will 
be on our own heads (or, more probably, in some one 
else's stomach), but though we fail, we are in no worse 
case than those who dared not postulate : uncompre- 
hended chaos will engulf both them and us. If we 
succeed, we have the clue to the labyrinth. Our as- 
sumption, therefore, is at least a methodological necessity ; 
it may turn out to be (or be near) a fundamental fact 
in nature. We stand to lose nothing and to gain every- 
thing by making a postulate which is both a practical 
necessity and an obvious methodological assumption, 
pointing out a way of investigating a subject with which 
we must grapple, if we will to carry on the struggle which 
is life. 

Quid plura ? Experience has shown that Nature 
condones our audacity, and step by step our assumption 
has been confirmed. The ' reign of law ' has turned out 
to be as absolute as ever we chose to make it, and our 
assumption has worked wherever we have chosen to apply 
it. Thus the speculations to which we were first driven 
in the hungry teeth of savage facts by the slender hope 
of profit, by the overpowering fear of the ruin which 
stared us in the face, have slowly ceased to be speculative 
and become the foundations of the ordinary everyday 
business of life. Our postulates have grown respectable, 
and are now entitled axioms. 

§ 40. By way of a change I may pass to consider the 
function of the postulate in a very different region, viz. 
the construction of our conceptions of Space and Time, 
which since Kant it has become difficult not to treat of in 
analogous fashion. In Kant, of course, it will be 
remembered that they are treated as twin instances of 
' pure ' ' intuition ' or ' perception ' (reine Anschauung) giving 
rise to synthetic judgments a priori and needing to be 
systematically distinguished both from perceptions ( Wahr- 
nehmung) and from conceptions. Nevertheless it will 
hardly escape an unprejudiced observer that a ' pure 
intuition ' is strangely intermediate between a perception 
and a conception. 



ii2 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

Of this curious fact the explanation which I shall 
venture to suggest is that in reality the reine Anschauung 
is a hermaphrodite, both perceptual and conceptual, and 
that Kant's doctrine on the subject rests on a systematic 
confounding of these two aspects. He argues first that 
Space and Time cannot be perceptions by appealing to 
their conceptual nature, and then that they cannot be 
conceptions by appealing to their perceptual character. 
So he has to construct the pure intuition as a third thing 
which they may safely be, seeing that they can be neither 
percepts nor concepts. But he has overlooked the 
possible alternative that, as so often, the same word has 
to do duty both for percept and concept, and that by 
' Space ' and ' Time ' we mean now the one and now 
the other. This ambiguity having escaped his notice, 1 
the result is that the whole doctrine of the Transcendental 
yEsthetic is pervaded by a thorough-going confusion of 
psychology and logic. 

As against Kant, I shall contend that the nature of 
Space and Time remains an inexhaustible source of 
paradox and perplexity, until it is recognised that in each 
case what has happened has been that certain psycho- 
logical data have been made the basis of conceptual con- 
structions by a course of methodological postulation. 

§ 41. In the case of Space these psychological data 
consist of the inherent extension or spatiality of the 
perceptions of the senses of sight and ' touch ' ( = 
pressure + muscular contraction + articular motion), in 
consequence whereof we can no more perceive the un- 
extended than (despite Kant) we can perceive empty 
Space. These perceptual spaces are fused by the 
necessities (needs) of practical life, which force us to 
correlate the visual and tactile images of objects, into a 
single perceptual or real space, in which we suppose 
ourselves and all objective realities to be immersed. 
Thus spatiality is a given attribute of the real world as 
empirical originally as its colour or its weight. 

1 The simplest and most flagrant proof of this is to be found in the fact that 
Kant does not distinguish between the problems of pure and applied geometry. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 113 

But this real space is very far from being identical 
with the space of the geometers. Geometrical space is 
a conceptual construction founded upon space-perception 
and aiming at the simplest system of calculating the 
behaviour of bodies in real space — a matter obviously of 
the greatest practical importance. Hence it is built up 
by a series of postulates into an ideal structure which 
at no poitit coincides tvith our perceptual space and in many 
respects is even antithetical to it. 

Thus it is commonly stated that ' Space ' (conceptual) 
is one, empty, homogeneous, continuous, infinite, infinitely 
divisible, identical, and invariable. Now every one of 
these attributes is the product of an idealising con- 
struction the purpose of which is to facilitate the inter- 
pretation and manipulation of the movements of bodies in 
real (physical or perceptual) space, which stands in the 
sharpest contrast with our conceptual construction by 
being many, filled, heterogeneous, continuous only for per- 
ception (if atomism be true), probably finite, 1 not infinitely 
divisible (atoms again !) and variable. 

And this is how and why we construct the qualities 
of our ideal geometrical space. We make it one and 
identical by correlating our sense-spaces, by fusing the 
multitude of fields of vision and by refusing to recognise 
the spaces of our dream experiences, in order that 
we may have a common standard to which we can 
refer all our space-perceptions. We make it empty 
and invariable by abstracting from that which fills it 
and changes in it, in order that nothing may distract us 
from the contemplation of its pure form. We make it 
infinite and infinitely divisible by carrying actual motions 
and divisions on in thought, because it is sweet to imagine 
that no limit exists beyond which we cannot penetrate. 
We make it continuous by idealising an (apparent) 
feature of perception, in order to confer upon it a mystic 
invulnerability. And lastly we make it homogeneous — 
structureless, and therefore able to receive any and every 

1 I should say ' certainly ' myself, but I prefer to understate the case. Cf. 
Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. ix. §2-11. 

I 



ii4 F. C. S. SCHILLER u 

structure — in order to relieve our minds and practical 
forecasts of the utter and incalculable heterogeneity 
which renders the physical qualities of real space different 
at every point. And last of all we make perceptual and 
conceptual space share in the same name, because for 
practical purposes we want to identify the latter with the 
former and to affirm its validity, and are not concerned to 
save philosophers from confusion. 

And yet when the philosopher has laboriously 
disentangled the varied threads that are woven into the 
texture of practical life, and questions us, we can realise 
the character of our constructions. We can see full well 
that all these attributes which conceptual space postulates 
are impossible in perceptual space ; that is just the reason 
why we demand them. They are pure abstractions which 
idealise the actual and serve the purpose of enabling us to 
simplify and to calculate its behaviour. And so long as 
our assumptions come sufficiently near to reality for our 
practical purposes, we have no reason to emphasise the 
distinction between the two senses of ' Space ' and 
indeed are interested rather in slurring over the 
divergence between pure and applied mathematics. 

§ 42. Our assumption, then, of geometrical space is 
true because it works and in so far as it works. But 
does it work ? In modern times ingenious attempts have 
been made to contest this assumption, and to reconstruct 
geometry ' on an empirical basis ' or at least, to construct 
alternatives to the traditional ' geometry of Euclid.' 
These ' metageometrical ' speculations have indulged in 
many crudities and extravagances and have not in all 
cases succeeded in freeing themselves from the very con- 
fusions they were destined to dissipate. But they have 
achieved a great work in stirring up philosophers out 
of their dogmatic trust in ' the certainty of mathe- 
matics,' and forcing them to realise the true nature of 
geometric postulates. 

The chief philosophic results of the Non-Euclidian 
metageometry are briefly these. The Euclidian space- 
construction rests upon ' the postulate of Euclid ' as to 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 115 

parallel straight lines, which Euclid postulated in the 
innocency of his heart, because he wanted it, and the 
indemonstrableness of which had ever since been con- 
sidered a disgrace to geometry. The simple explanation 
of this fact proffered by metageometry is that conceptual 
space is a generic conception capable of being construed 
in several specific ways, and that Euclid's postulate (or its 
equivalent, the equality of the angles of the triangle to two 
right angles) stated the specific differentia of the space 
Euclid proceeded to construct. But out of the same data 
of spatial perception other systems of conceptual geometry 
might have been constructed, whose distinctive postulates 
(as to the number of ' parallels ' to be drawn through a 
given point or as to the sum of the angles of the ' triangle ') 
diverged symmetrically from that of Euclid and would 
give rise to coherent, consistent and necessary geometries, 
logically on a par with Euclid's and differing from the 
latter only in the point of usefulness. 

For, however much the new geometries of ' spherical ' 
and ' pseudo-spherical ' space x might claim to rival the 
logical perfections of the traditional geometry, they have 
not been able to contest its practical supremacy. Their 
assumptions are much less simple, and their consequences 
are much less calculable and much less easily applicable 
to the behaviour of objects in real space. It seems to be 
possible indeed to conceive experiences which would be 
most easily and conveniently interpreted on meta- 
geometrical assumptions, but it has had to be reluctantly 
acknowledged that so far no such experiences have fallen 
to our lot. Euclidian geometry is fully competent to do 
the work we demand of our geometrical constructions. 

But that does not make it more real than its rivals. 
They are all three conceptual constructions which may or 
may not be valid and useful, but which are alike in- 
competent to claim existence. Hence the question which 

1 The alleged geometry of four dimensions seems to rest on a false analogy. 
The three dimensions of our space constructions are empirical and depend on 
the original data of our space-senses, which in their turn seem to depend on the 
triple analysis of motions by means of the semicircular canals of the ear, and the 
behaviour of the physical bodies to which they are adaptations. 



n6 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

has been so much debated in metageometrical controversy, 
viz. ' whether our space is Euclidian or not ' is strictly 
nonsense. It is like asking whether the Sistine Madonna 
is the mother of Christ. To ask whether our space is 
Euclidian or Non-Euclidian is like disputing whether this 
assertion may be more truly made of the Sistine Madonna 
or of the Madonna della Sedia. For like Raphael's pictures 
all our conceptual geometries are ideal interpretations of 
a reality, which they surpass in beauty and symmetry, 
but upon which they ultimately depend, and it would be 
hard to adduce more eloquent testimony of the dependence 
of these theoretic structures on practical needs than the 
fact that from the first the conceptual interpretation of 
spatial experiences instinctively adopted by mankind 
should have been that which subsequent analysis has 
shown to be the simplest, easiest, and most manageable. 

§ 43. For illustrative purposes the construction of the 
conception of Time is vastly inferior to that of Space. 
The conception of Time involves a much more arduous 
effort of abstraction and its lack of ' Ansdiaulichkeit' is 
such that it can hardly be conceived, and certainly cannot 
be used, without an appeal to spatial metaphor. Hence 
I must confine myself to a few hints showing the close 
analogy of the method of its conceptual construction with 
that of Space, in the hope that they may prove (jxovavTa 

(TVP€TOLCrLV. 

Nothing but misunderstanding of the nature of Time is 
possible unless it is recognised that the word covers three 
different things which may be distinguished as subjective, 
objective, and conceptual Time. 

Of these subjective Time (or times, since every centre 
of experience possesses an indefinite plurality of his own, 
if we do not — as for practical purposes we always do 
— exclude the times of dreams, etc.) alone can claim to be 
a matter of immediate experience. It consists in the 
psychical facts of succession and memory, and its ' present 
time ' always has duration. It forms the psychological 
basis of all time-constructions, but for practical purposes 
it is well nigh useless. Our subjective time estimates 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 117 

vary too enormously for us to live by them. The time 
which to the philosopher may pass all too rapidly in 
metaphysical discussion, may bore the schoolboy to 
extinction ; and conversely the philosopher might prefer 
extinction to listening for three hours a-day to a discus- 
sion of cricket matches or to a Parliamentary debate. 

Hence for the purposes of what Prof. Ward calls 
intersubjective intercourse it is necessary to devise or 
somehow to advance to a ' Time ' which shall be more 
objective. Objective Time is what we live by, and what 
we read upon the faces of our ' time-pieces ' (provided 
they ' keep time ' !) correcting thereby our subjective 
estimates of the flow of successive experience. As this 
example shows, objective time depends upon constructions 
(including that of our watches) and motions, or more 
precisely, upon the synchronism of motions and the 
assumption of physical constants. But it remains wholly 
relative, and this enables the philosopher to deduce some 
curious and interesting consequences. 1 

To reach absolute ' Newtonian ' Time, flowing equably 
and immutably from a infinite and irrevocable Past, 
through a ' punctual ' {i.e. durationless and infinitely 
divisible) and yet exclusively real Present, to an infinite 
Future, conceptual postulation has to be called into play. 
The absoluteness and equable flow are demands for a 
constancy which objective Time will not show ; the con- 
struction of Past, Present, and Future results from the 
need to arrange the facts of memory ; the infinity and 
infinite divisibility, as in the case of space, result from a 
thinking away of the contents and limits of the actual 
experience. But on the whole the usefulness of conceptual 
Time seems very limited, and is counterbalanced by 
troublesome antinomies as soon as it is separated from 
the experience it is intended to interpret. 2 

§ 44. I pass over the axiomatic postulates of arithmetic, 
the methodological postulates which are found in every 

1 Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. iii. § 6, and ix. § n. 

2 The best illustration of this perhaps is that if conceptual Time were real, 
or ' Time ' really had the attributes postulated for it, Achilles never could catch 
the Tortoise. Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. xii. § n. 



u8 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

science and the metaphysical postulates involved in the 
conception of substance : the first, because I may refer to 
Prof. James's account of them in the Principles of 
Psychology (ii. p. 653 foil.) and have no desire to 'outdo 
the good man ' ; the second, because of their number and 
the amount of special knowledge which it requires to 
expound and appreciate them ; the third, because in all 
its traditional forms I am sceptical as to the usefulness, 
and therefore as to the validity, of the conception of 
substance, and cannot stay to propound measures for its 
reform. 1 

§ 45. On the other hand too much may be gleaned 
from the consideration of postulates which are not yet 
acknowledged to be axiomatic, nor indeed universally 
to be valid, for us to pass them over. I may mention 
in the first instance the assumption of Teleology. 2 

Teleology in one sense is an indubitable postulate 
of the highest significance. In the interpretation of 
nature, we must always assume a certain conformity 
between nature and human nature, in default of which 
the latter cannot understand the former. Thus human 
nature is the sole key to nature which we possess, and 
if it will not unlock the arcana, we must resign ourselves 
to sceptical despair. If, therefore, every attempt to know 
rests on the fundamental methodological postulate that 
the world is knowable, we must also postulate that it 
can be interpreted ex analogic/, Jiominis and anthropo- 
morphically. 3 And moreover the closer the correspond- 

1 The outcome of orthodox philosophic criticism of the substance- concept at 
present seems to be that substantiality cannot be legitimately affirmed of the 
psychical and must be reserved for the physical. Meanwhile the substantiality of 
the ultimate counters of physical speculation is becoming more and more shadowy, 
and its assumption more and more superfluous. The situation seems to me some- 
what absurd. But q ue j 'aire so long as those concerned prefer the fog and decline 
to clear the atmosphere ? Cf. however my art. on the Conception of 'Evipyeia 
(Mind, N.S., No. 36). 

2 By Teleology I do not mean, of course, the contemplation of parts in their 
relation to a whole, but what the word — until (by way of compromising with its 
enemies) it was attenuated to a futile shadow of itself — always meant, viz. the 
assertion of purposive intelligence as an agency in the world. 

8 Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. v. § 6. As Dr. Julius Schultz well says 
in his stimulating book. Die Psychologie der Axiome (p. 99 and passim), to 
think is to anthropomorphise. Intellectualists will perhaps admit this eventually 
— shortly before their extinction ! 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 119 

ence between nature and human nature can be shown 
to be, the more knowable will the world be, and the more 
we shall feel at home in it. Hence, it is a methodological 
demand to anthropomorphise the world as far as ever 
we can. 

Now human nature, in so far as it is ' rational,' is 
teleological — it pursues ends which appear to it reasonable 
and desirable, and tends to become more and more 
systematically purposive the more highly it develops. 
Of course, therefore, we must try to find this action for 
the sake of ends throughout nature, or if we fail, to find 
the most efficient approximation to it we can. Now, 
with regard to the actions of our fellowmen, and indeed 
in the case of all animal life, the full ascription of 
teleology is not only practicable but practically unavoid- 
able. But with regard to the other departments of 
nature, and indeed nature as a whole, modern science 
has persuaded itself that teleological explanations are 
at present unworkable and therefore ' unscientific.' The 
ideal of scientific explanation is ' mechanical,' and this 
is taken to be anti-teleological. 

So far, therefore, teleology remains a postulate, which 
it is not possible to carry through, and to render an 
axiom of biological or physical research. The situation 
is deplorable, but not desperate. For, in the first place, 
the antiteleological bias of natural science is largely due 
to the perverse use professing teleologists have made of 
their postulate. Instead of treating it as a method 
whereby to understand the complex relations of reality, 
they have made it into an apybs \6<yos which shut off 
all further possibilities of investigation, by ascribing 
everything to a ' divine purpose,' and then, in order to 
shirk the laborious task of tracing the working of the 
divine intelligence in the world, adding the suicidal ' rider ' 
that the divine purpose was inscrutable. Teleological 
explanation was thus rendered impossible, while the 
mechanical assumptions were found to be capable of 
working out into valuable results, it is true of a lower 
order of intelligibility. In the second place, although 



120 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

the teleological postulate is not useful in the present 
stage of scientific development, that is not to say that 
it cannot be rendered useful hereafter. It is open to 
any one to adopt the method, and if he can show 
valuable results attained thereby, he will not find true 
scientists slow to recognise its validity. Hitherto indeed 
the method has failed, not so much because men could 
not use it, as because they would not, or at least would 
not use it properly. If, at any time, they should want 
to use it, they would probably find that it was useful 
far beyond the limits of its present application. 

§ 46. But even these limits are in reality far wider than 
is ordinarily recognised. In another way from that which 
we have just been considering the validity of teleology 
is raised above the very possibility of question. What 
are these mechanical explanations which have so success- 
fully preoccupied the fertile fields of science ? They are 
devices of our own, methods which we have tried and 
found workable, ideals conceived by our intelligence to 
which we are coaxing reality to approximate ; they are 
pervaded by human purposiveness through and through, 
and prove that, so far as we have tried, nature conforms 
to our thoughts and desires, and is anthropomorphic enough 
to be mechanical. In being mechanical it plays into our 
hands, as James says, and confesses itself to be intelligible 
and teleological to that extent at least. There is no 
intelligibility without conformity with human nature, and 
human nature is teleological. A mechanically law-abiding 
universe does conform to some of our demands and is so 
far intelligible. We must assume, therefore, that this 
conformity will extend further, that, if we try sincerely 
and pertinaciously and ingeniously enough, we can force 
nature to reveal itself as wholly conformable to our nature 
and our demands. Nothing less than that will content 
us, and nothing less than that need be assumed. Nay, 
any attempt to stop short at something less, e.g. at a 
world which was mechanically intelligible, or even intel- 
lectually intelligible, but ignored our moral and emotional 
demands, would seem to jeopardise all that the pertinacity 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 121 

of our sciences has achieved. A world which can be ' fully- 
explained,' but only in mechanical or barely intellectual 
terms, is not fully intelligible, is not fully explained. Nay, 
at bottom it involves the most abysmal unintelligibility of 
all, to my thinking. It lures us into thinking it rational, 
only to check our progress by insuperable barriers later 
on. Compared with the tantalising torment of this 
supposition, and the derisive doubt it reflects on all our 
earlier ' successes,' a scepticism which consistently assumes 
a fundamental incommensurability of man and his ex- 
perience, and a consequent unknowableness of the world, 
and patiently endures their practical consequences, would 
seem more tolerable and dignified. 

We must, therefore, assume all or nothing — we have 
some (unless we choose to lose it by lack of faith) ; we 
must hope and strive for all. Shall we then, in face of 
all the successes of our sciences, infer that all intelligence 
(our own included) is a fond delusion for which there is 
no room vis-a-vis of true reality ? miseras hominum 
mentes, pectora cceca ! Can it really be that they cannot 
see that every triumph of the most rabidly ' anti- 
teleological ' mechanical method is, from the ' synoptic ' 
standpoint of philosophy, so much more welcome testimony 
to the power of the human mind and will to grapple 
with its experience, and confirms the validity of its 
teleological assumptions ? At all events such blindness, 
whether it be involuntary or voluntary, is not possible to 
one who has grasped the truth that theoretic truths are 
the children of postulation. His eyes are opened, and 
the question whether teleology is valid is finally closed. 
For is not his whole theory one continuous and over- 
whelming illustration of the doctrine that without purposive 
activity there would be no knowledge, no order, no rational 
experience, nothing to explain, and no means of explain- 
ing anything? What, in a word, is his whole account of 
mental organisation but a demonstration of the teleology 
of axioms ? 

\ 47. I must pass over with a mere mention sundry 
postulates of a religious character, whose position has 



122 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

been rendered still more dubious than that of teleology by 
the prevailing misconceptions as to the validity of postu- 
lation. An intelligent reader will perhaps gather from 
what has been said in the last section why the Personality 
of God should be esteemed an indispensable postulate. 
The fact again that the goodness of God is a methodo- 
logical postulate x will be found to throw much light on 
the rationality of all religions, just as the pitiably in- 
adequate way in which it has actually been carried out 
illustrates the irrationality which unfortunately ever 
clings even to the best of them. 

Is Immortality a postulate, as Kant maintained ? If 
so, in what sense and to what extent ? These are 
questions well worthy of being pondered, not without a 
cautious discrimination between immortality in Heaven 
and in Hell. But at present we are too profoundly 
ignorant as to what men actually desire in the matter, 
and why, and how, to decide what they ought to desire. 
Hence, pending the publication of the results of a 
statistical inquiry undertaken by the American Branch of 
Society for Psychical Research, which I hope will 
yield copious and valuable data, profitable discussion of 
these questions must be postponed. 2 



VII 

§48. Having in the above sections exemplified the 
method by which the postulatory nature of representative 
axioms may be displayed, I may proceed to round off my 
essay with some concluding reflections. 

I will begin with a couple of cautions. In the first 

1 Even devil-worshippers must assume that their god is susceptible to flattery and 
capable of being propitiated, i.e. is good to them ; a thorough fiend would paralyse 
all religious activity. As for a non-moral ' deity, ' it cannot be worshipped and 
may with impunity be ignored. Wherefore, q.e.d. 

2 It seems probable that the result will be to show that though immortality 
may be (logically) a postulate it is not (psychologically) postulated, or at least 
not postulated with scientific intent. If so the anomalous condition of the doctrine 
is due to the fact that the great majority do not desire to have a future life proved, 
do not attempt to prove it, and thwart the few who do attempt this. Hence the 
state of our knowledge remains commensurate with that of our desire, and the 
' postulate ' remains a mere postulate without developing into a source of 
knowledge. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 123 

place in default of a knowledge of the historical details of 
the psychological development of our earlier postulates, I 
have had to content myself with schematic derivations in 
logical order. The real procedure was probably far more 
complicated, casual, and gradual, and far less conscious 
than I have represented it. In fact I see little reason to 
suppose that any of the makers of the early postulates 
had any consciousness of the logical import of their 
procedure or knew why they made them. We know this 
often to have been the case, that, e.g. the logical and 
geometrical postulates were used long before they were 
reflected on scientifically, and still longer before they were 
understood. But this is no real difficulty, and we can 
study the psychological processes involved by observing 
any one who is persuading himself of the truth of what he 
would like and would find it convenient to believe, e.g. 
that he loves where money is, or that being in love his 
mistress is perfection. It is only for the cold-blooded 
analysis of an unconcerned observer that logical chasms 
yawn in such processes ; the agent himself in the heat of 
action is wafted over them unawares by the impetuous 
flow of instinctive feeling, and would doubtless reject our 
analysis of his motives with the sincerest indignation. 

For to an unreflective and uncritical mind whatever 
looks likely to gratify desire presents itself with an 
inevitableness and aesthetic self-evidence which precludes 
all doubt. And we are all unreflective and uncritical 
enough to accept the self-evidence also of the devices we 
denominate ' truth,' until at least the doubt as to their 
real character has been forced upon us. 

It should be clear from this how I should conceive the 
logical question with regard to postulation to be related to 
the psychological, and how I should reply to an objector 
who was willing to grant that postulation is the method 
whereby we come by our axioms psychologically, but 
denied that this affected the logical problem of their 
justification. 

To this we should reply that we also distinguish 
between the motives which assume and the trials which 



124 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

justify an axiom. A postulate does not become 
axiomatic until it has been found to be workable and in 
proportion as it is so. But we deny that the two 
questions can be separated and logic be cut adrift from 
psychology and dissipated in the ether of the unintelligible. 
Psychological processes are the vehicles of truth, and 
logical value must be found in psychological fact or 
nowhere. Before a principle can have its logical validity 
determined, it must be tried ; and it can be tried only if 
some one can be induced to postulate it. Logical 
possibilities (or even ' necessities ') are nothing until they 
have somehow become psychologically actual and active. 
A ' truth ' which no one ever conceives is nothing. It is 
certainly no truth. 

Hence it is impossible to treat the logical question of 
axioms without reference to the actual processes whereby 
they are established, and their actual functioning in minds 
which entertain the logical in close connection with their 
other ideals. If therefore it is by postulation that we do 
know, we cannot but base on postulation our theory of 
how we ought to know. Here, as elsewhere, the ideals of 
the normative science must be developed out of the facts 
of the descriptive science. Regarded from the stand- 
point of the higher purpose of the former, 1 the 
psychological processes must be purged of the hesitations, 
inconsistencies and irrelevancies which clog them in their 
actual occurrence, and when this evaluation is completed, it 
yields the norms which ought to be, but as yet are only in part. 
Thus (as must indeed have become obvious to a careful 
reader of the preceding sections) the logical account of 
Postulation is an idealised version of the course of actual 
postulating. But for this very reason it has a guiding 
power over the actual processes, which the fancy processes 
of an abstracted logic, legislating vainly in the void, can 
never claim. 

§ 49. Secondly, I am of course aware that in applying 
to the problem of knowledge the method of origins I am 
debarred in one sense from giving a complete explanation. 

1 Which of course is itself a psychological fact. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 125 

For granting that I have succeeded in connecting our 
cognitive apparatus with the earlier functions of conscious- 
ness by means of the principle of the postulate, it is open 
to any one to demand the reason why we should be 
capable of feeling and volition, and so gradually to drive 
me back into the formless, mindless, undifferentiated void 
which is conceived to precede all evolution. That this 
difficulty should occur in all theories is no answer, and a 
poor consolation. 

The true answer is that the method of origins is of 
relative validity and that in the end we never find out 
' what a thing really is ' by asking ' what it was in the 
beginning.' Nor does the true value of the method 
reside in the (illusory) starting-point to which it goes 
back, but in the knowledge it acquires on the way. The 
true nature of a thing is to be found in its validity — 
which, however, must be connected rather than contrasted 
with its origin. ' What a thing really is ' appears from 
what it does, and so we must study its whole career. We 
study its past to forecast its future, and to find out what 
it is really ' driving at' Any complete explanation, 
therefore, is by final causes, and implies a knowledge of 
ends and aims which we can often only imperfectly 
detect. 

All this of course applies also to the case of knowledge. 
Knowledge cannot be derived out of something other and 
more primitive ; even if the feat were feasible, it would 
only explain ignotutn per ignotius. Hence to analyse it 
into ' elements ' and ' primary forms ' is in a manner 
illusory ; so long as its structure is not completed, the 
final significance of its forms cannot be clearly mirrored 
in its structure. Ultimately, therefore, it is impossible to 
explain the higher by the lower, the living organism of 
growing truth by its dissected members. If we desire 
completeness, we must look not to the vkt], as in different 
ways our theories of knowledge all have done, 1 but to the 

1 For both the apriorist and the empiricist accounts add this to the catalogue 
of their shortcomings. Both explain the system of actual concrete knowledge 
which is growing to completion in the cosmic process, by a reference to the 
beggarly elements out of which it has arisen, composed of the abhorrent skeleton 



126 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

Te'Xo?. And to claim definitive finality for any present 
theory of knowledge would seem to crave no slight equip- 
ment with the panoply of ignorance. 

But is the end in sight ? Can we infer from what 
knowledge has been, and now is, what it should be, and 
God willing, will be ? We can of course (as explained 
in the last section) construct, to some extent, the ideal on 
the basis of our knowledge of the actual. But though 
therefore an answer is not perhaps wholly inconceivable 
even to this question, an exploration of the seventh Heaven 
is hardly germane to the present inquiry. 

§ 50. I cannot more fitly close this rough sketch of a 
great subject than by adding a few words as to the prob- 
able effect on philosophy of a more general adoption of the 
principle I have advocated. It may, I think, reasonably 
be anticipated that it will have a reviving and most in- 
vigorating influence upon an invaluable constituent of 
human culture which too often has been betrayed by the 
professing champions who were bound and paid to sustain 
its banner against the attacks of fools and Philistines. 
Philosophy is once again, as so often in its history, ' the 
sick man' among the sciences: it has suffered unspeakable 
things at the hands of a multitude of its doctors, whose 
chief idea of a proper regimen for the philosophic spirit 
has been to starve it upon a lowering diet of logic-chopped 
conundrums, to cut it off from all communication with 
real life and action, to seclude it in arid and inaccessible 
wastes whence there is an easy descent to the House of 
Hades, and by constant blood-letting to thrust it down 
into the gloomy limbo where a pallid horde of useless, half- 
hypostasised abstractions vainly essays to mimic the wealth 
and variety, the strength and beauty of reality. That 
philosophy has not perished out of the land under such 
treatment testifies with no uncertain voice to its divine 
destiny and to the glow of ambrosial fire that courses 
in its veins. We may expect, therefore, a marvellous 

of the a priori necessities of thought in the one case, and the crude mass of 
chaotic experiences in the other. But from the standpoint of the reXos what 
knowledge has become is truer, because more valuable, than what it has become 
out of. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 127 

recovery once it has by the might of postulation shaken off 
the twofold curse under which it has for so long laboured, 
the curse of intellectualism and the curse of a will that does 
not know itself, and in its self-diremption turns against 
itself, to postulate the conflicting and incongruous. 

Intellectualism, to which it has already several times 
been necessary to refer in unappreciative terms, is 
naturally the besetting sin of philosophers, and a per- 
ennial idol of the academic theatre. Intellect being 
the distinguishing characteristic of the philosopher and 
the indispensable means of holding a mirror up to 
nature, he exhibits a constant tendency to substitute 
the part for the whole and to exalt it into the sole and 
only true reality. His infatuation is such that it seems 
to him to matter not one whit, that it proves patently 
and pitiably unequal to its role ; that to maintain itself 
in the false position into which it has been forced, it 
has to devastate reality and call it truth ; that it has 
to pervert the empty scliemata of ' universal ' abstractions 
from their legitimate use as means to classification, and 
erecting them into ends, to substitute them for the living 
reals ; that even when it has been permitted to cut and 
carve the Real at its pleasure, and to impose on us two- 
dimensional images in lieu of the solid fact, it has in the 
end to confess that the details and individuality of the 
Real elude its grasp. 

But when, for the sake of bolstering up an inhuman 
and incompetent, and impracticable intellectualism, an 
attempt is made to cut down the scope of philosophy 
to an attenuated shred which intellectualism can con- 
template without dismay, when we are required to believe 
that philosophy need aim only at understanding, 1 and 
at understanding in general, without either condescending 
to the particular, or considering that which ' passeth all 
understanding,' it is high time to protest. It is the 
individual concrete experience in all its fulness which 

1 The thing is of course really impossible. A mere ' understanding ' which 
excludes any aspect of the given reality is not even understanding in the end, and 
would only aggravate our sense of the burden of an unintelligible world. 
Cf. § 46. 



128 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

every man worthy of the name wants philosophy to 
interpret for him ; and a philosophy which fails to do 
this is for him false. Intellectualism is necessarily false 
because it only operates with conceptions, whose purpose 
and essential construction incapacitate them from account- 
ing for the individuality from which they have abstracted. 
It reduces the philosopher to an impotent spectator of 
a supra-rational universe which he can interpret only as 
irrational. 

And in this case the on -looker sees nothing of the 
game, because he sees a game which he does not under- 
stand, and cannot understand unless he has tried to play 
it. It is a false abstraction of intellectualism to divorce 
thinking from doing, and to imagine that we can think 
the world truly without acting in it rightly. But in reality 
this is quite impossible. ' Pure ' thought which is not 
tested by action and correlated with experience, means 
nothing, and in the end turns out mere pseudo-thought. 
Genuine thinking must issue from and guide action, 
must remain immanent in the life in which it moves 
and has its being. Action, conversely, must not be 
opposed to thought, nor supposed to be effective without 
thought ; it needs thought, and elaborates it ; it is not 
a " red mist of doing " which obscures the truth, but the 
radiance which illumes it. 

In Lebensfluten, im Thatensturm, 

Wallt es auf und ab . . . 

So schafft es am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit 

Und wirket der Menschheit lebendiges Kleid. 

Faust, Act i. Scene i (with the 
necessary variations). 

To trace, therefore, to their root in the postulations of 
personal need the arrogant pretensions of ' pure thought,' 
and thus to get rid of the haunting shadow of intel- 
lectualism, reopens the way to a philosophy which re- 
mains in touch with life, and strenuously participates in 
the solution of its problems. 

8 51. Such practical success in its completeness is, 
of course, a sufficiently remote contingency ; but there 



n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 129 

is a further reason for the expectation that it will be 
greatly facilitated by the proof of the volitional foundations 
of our intelligence. For it disposes also of another 
serious and inveterate source of philosophic confusion, 
and constant stimulus to philosophic despair, viz. the 
notion that philosophic difficulties arise out of the 
incompetence of the reason. Now there is some foundation 
for this notion. A certain class of philosophic problems, 
to wit, those which have no earthly concern with practical 
life (like, e.g. the Absolute and its habits), and so cannot 
be tested by action, are really ultra vires of an intelligence 
which was devised and developed to harmonise experience. 
But then we have all along contended that such problems 
are not real problems at all, but miasmatic exhalations 
of a false intellectualism, which has misconstrued its own 
nature and powers. Such problems are insoluble, because 
in the end they are unmeaning. But there are other 
cases where the intellect seems to fail us in questions 
of the most pressing practical importance. Hence so 
long as the dogma of the primacy of the intellect prevails, 
it seems hard to acquit the human reason of the 
charge of being infected with fundamental disabilities 
and insoluble antinomies. For is it not easy to draw 
up a formidable array of incompatible assertions and to 
provide each with a 'proof in logically unexceptionable 
terms ? 

But of these ' difficulties ' it now seems possible to 
propound a profounder explanation. The real root of 
the trouble may be found to lie in the will rather 
than in the reason, whose innocent amiability is always 
ready to provide an intellectual formulation for the most 
discordant aims and the most obscure desires. Let us, 
therefore, insist that before the reason is condemned 
untried, and philosophy is finally reduced to a trivial 
game which may amuse but can never really satisfy, it 
is necessary to inquire whether the ' antinomies ' do not 
arise rather from volitional discord than from intellectual 
defect, whether the contradictions of the reason are not 
forced upon it by an indecision which knows not what 

K 



130 F. C. S. SCHILLER n 

it wills, a division of the will which insists on willing 
incompatibles, or a lack of courage and endurance which 
fails to follow out what it wills. 

That this should be the case need not arouse surprise. 
We are all sufficiently aware that systematic thinking, 
clearly conscious of its aim, is a somewhat infrequent 
phenomenon, and that in myriad ways intellectual confusion 
renders possible the co-existence of inconsistent doctrines 
in the same mind. But the intellectualist phrasing of our 
terminology renders us slow to recognise that infirmity of 
purpose is a no less rampant affliction, that numbers of 
really intelligent persons are addicted to the retention of 
incompatible desires, and either do not know what they 
will, or cannot ' make up their minds ' to will consistently. 
Indeed it is probably true to say that 'confusion of will' 
is a better description of a very common psychic condition 
than ' confusion of thought,' and that most of what passes 
for the latter is more properly ascribed to the former. 
For all such volitional indecision, whereof a desire both to 
eat one's cake and to have it is by no means the least 
venial form, masks itself in intellectual vestments, and 
so contributes to cast doubt upon the faith that, with 
patience and proper treatment, our minds are adequate 
instruments to cope with the practical problems of our 
experience. 

In illustration of this doctrine a single very common 
and glaring instance may, on the principle exemplo ab uno 
disce omnes, suffice. The insolubility of the ' mystery of 
evil ' arises simply and solely out of the fact that people 
will neither abandon the practice of passing moral 
judgments on events, nor the dogmas which render all 
ethical valuation ultimate foolishness. As soon as they 
make up their distracted ' minds ' {wills) which of the 
incompatible alternatives they will choose to abide by, 
whether they prefer to vindicate the supreme validity of 
moral distinctions, or the ' infinity of God ' and the 
absolute ' unity of the universe,' the mystery disappears. 
For Evil visibly arises from certain limitations, performs 
certain functions, subserves certain purposes, is connected 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 131 

with certain conditions, in the economy of the universe, 
all of which admit of being empirically determined or 
conjectured. All that is required, therefore, to bring the 
existence of Evil into accord with the postulated goodness 
of God is that we should conceive (as we easily can) a 
deity subject to the limitations, working under the 
conditions, aiming at the purposes, which we believe 
ourselves to have discovered. Similarly, if we deny that 
moral attributes can fitly be applied to the deity or the 
universe, Evil is simply a natural fact like any other. Of 
course, if we refuse to do either of these things, and insist 
on maintaining both these positions, we manufacture a 
mystery which is as insoluble as we have made it. It is 
insoluble because we will not either live in (or with) a non- 
moral universe, or give up indulging a perverted taste that 
revels in infinities. Thus it is not our ' reason ' which is 
to blame, but our ' will. 5 For neither reason nor revelation 
compels us to frustrate the belief in God's goodness by 
that in His infinity. 

And even in cases where a modicum of genuine 
intellectual confusion has entered into the composition of 
an antinomy of the reason, it is impossible to deny the 
complicity, and ultimate responsibility, of the ' will.' 
Intellectual confusion is most frequently the product of 
habitual thoughtlessness, carelessness, inattention and 
laziness, and even where it is due to sheer stupidity, 1 the 
obstinacy which adheres to an antinomy after its solution 
has been clearly displayed is a volitional quality — of a 
reprehensible kind. 

We may infer then that there are no theoretically 
insoluble problems, or at all events that we have no right 

1 The moral valuation of stupidity is much too high ; perhaps in consequence 
the prevalence of an intellectualism which, by divorcing knowledge and action, 
encourages people to bestow moral admiration upon what is intellectually 
contemptible. Stupidity is commonly supposed to have an intrinsic affinity with 
virtue, or at least to be a quality of which no man or woman need be morally 
ashamed. In reality, however, it may be questioned whether it is ever found 
without moral guilt, either in its possessors or in their social medium. Hence, as 
well as for the purpose of evincing the sincerity of their rejection of intellectualism, 
it would be well if philosophers devoted some of their surplus ingenuity to 
inverting their ancient paradox that 'vice is ignorance' and expounding in its 
stead the profounder and more salutary dictum that ' ignorance is vice. ' 



132 F. C. S. SCHILLER a 

to assume so, but are methodologically bound to assume 
the opposite. 1 

§ 52. But, it may be urged, how does all this, even if 
true, help Philosophy ? Is it not just as bad, nay worse, 
that men should hug intellectual contradictions to their 
bosoms, and cherish absurdities with an affectionate 
devotion, than that they should believe themselves their 
reluctant victims ? 

I think not, for three reasons which I will set down. 

(1) The man who realises that he is inconsistent, 
deliberately and of malice prepense, can more easily be 
made to feel the responsibility for his mental condition 
than he who imagines that the very constitution of his 
mind brings him to his wretched pass. Moreover in most 
cases, the desires which attach him to one or other of 
the incompatible beliefs are not such as he really respects, 
and would easily faint from shame or wither with publicity. 

(2) Confusion of will may be remedied, like confusion 
of thought, by attention and reconsideration. Many who 
have hitherto proceeded unchallenged in blissful ignorance 
of their motives, who have lacked a clear consciousness 
of what they will and why, once they had their attention 
called to it would set to work to clear away the confusion. 

(3) There is hope from the young, even though the 
old generation should obstinately cling to its inveterate 
errors. Errors as a rule are not renounced ; they die 
out. In this particular case the prospect is perhaps a 
little brighter than usual, because not all who now believe 
in their speculative impotence really enjoy their position. 
And the young are in a different case : their natural 
sympathies are rather with a philosophy that makes the 
blood run warm than with one that congeals the natural 
flow of thought by the chilling vacuity of its abstractions. 
And they have little or no inducement to adopt the 
gratuitous and uncomfortable perplexities of their seniors. 
And besides errors clearly seen to arise from perverse 

1 I am already inclined to deny that, despite the utmost efforts of sceptics, 
theologians, and Mr. Bradley, there exist any theoretical antinomies which can be 
pronounced insoluble in principle — unless indeed the ' eternal cussedness ' of man 
be esteemed such. 



ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 133 

attitudes of will are no longer so readily communicable as 
while they were disguised as theoretic dogmas. Nor 
should it be forgotten that intellectualism is intrinsically 
duller, less inspiring, and more difficult to follow than 
voluntarism, which appeals more directly to the hopeful- 
ness, courage and enterprise which are the precious 
heritage of youth. 

So that on the whole we need not despair of Philosophy. 
Nay, we may gradually hope to see substituted for the 
disheartening and slothful twaddle {pace all the distin- 
guished persons who have repeated it) about the infirmities 
of the human reason and its impotence to break through 
the adamantine barriers of an alien world, exhortations 
bidding us be of good cheer and go forth to seek, 
if we would find, urging us to act if we would know, 
and to learn if we would act, and assuring us that if 
insuperable limits exist to the development and progression 
of the human spirit, man has not as yet taken pains 
enough to discover them, while it is the part of a cur 
and a craven to assume them without need. 

And so we must essay to weld together thought and 
deed, or rather, to resist the forces that insidiously dis- 
sever them and pit the intellect against the will in mean- 
ingless abstraction. For by a philosophy that seriously 
strives to comprehend the whole of experience, the unity 
of the agent is never forgotten in the multiplicity of his 
pursuits, but is emphatically affirmed in the principle of 
postulation, which pervades all theoretic activity, generates 
all axioms, initiates all experiment, and sustains all effort. 
For ever before the eyes of him whose wisdom dares to 
postulate will float, in clearer or obscurer outline, the 
beatific vision of that perfect harmony of all experience 
which he in all his strenuous struggles is striving to attain. 
And instead of immolating his whole life to the enervating 
sophism that it is all an ' appearance ' to be transcended 
by an unattainable ' reality,' let him hold rather that 
there can be for him no reality but that to which he wins 
his way through and by means of the appearances which 
are its presage. 



Ill 

THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM IN ITS 
RELATION TO PSYCHOLOGY 



By W. R. Boyce Gibson 

Part I. Freedom : A Defence and a Statement 

Much of the perplexity attaching to the problem of Free-Will arises from 
the wide-spread belief that free-will and universal determinism are not 
necessarily incompatible. 

In upholding this view the theory of ' soft ' determinism, as it has been 
called by Prof. James, makes such concessions to the theory of ' hard ' or 
mechanical determinism as render freedom logically impossible. Dr. 
Bosanquet and M. Fouillee, for instance, make concessions of this kind. 

The crucial concession is made when soft determinism concedes that only 
matter in motion can be a determinant of material changes ; for the 
consequence of this admission is a logical dilemma which compels the 
conceder to own that he must be either a materialist or a supporter 
of the conscious automaton theory. 

To escape from this dilemma, we must either retract the concession which 
led to it, or show that the conclusions to which the concession logically 
drives us are all absurd. 

The retracting of the concession is virtually a challenge to the mechanical 
determinist to prove his own statement instead of pressing us to accept 
it as axiomatic. 

To this demand for verification the mechanical determinist answers by 
pointing to the growing fruitfulness of science wherever the proposition 
in question is accepted as a regulative principle. Such verification is, 
however, by no means complete, and cannot disprove the reality of 
effective psychical initiative. 

The attempt to waive this demand for verification on the ground that the 
typically individual element involved in an act of free-will eludes by its 
very particularity the possibility of a scientific handling, cannot be 
regarded as valid. 

The alternative way of escape from the original dilemma by showing 
the absurdity of its conclusions is the simplest so far as the positive 
indictment of absurdity is concerned. It is palpably absurd to deny 
that ' meaning ' is a determinant of material changes. 

The more difficult task consists in answering the counter-indictment of 
absurdity brought forward by Naturalism in self-defence. But we are 

134 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 135 

able to show : (a) that the principle of psychical initiative is in no 
way incompatible with the principle of the Conservation of Energy, 
properly understood ; and (/3) that it does not violate the meaning oi 
the causal concept, inasmuch as the idea of causal nexus does not pre- 
suppose either a measured equivalency or a homogeneity in nature 
between cause and effect, and the idea of psychical causality in particular 
is no more open to the charge of inconceivability than is the idea of 
causality through material agency. 

10. If Freedom is not Soft Determinism, neither is it Indeterminism. The 

necessity for choosing definitely between these two rival theories arises 
only when the issue is restricted to the abstract consideration of some 
specific volitional act. It is therefore imperative to clearly define the 
issue at stake by insisting that freedom is the essence not only of self-con- 
scious volitional activity but of consciousness itself, and that we cannot 
profitably discuss its possibility unless we start from the relation in which 
the conscious subject stands to its object within the unity of experience. 

11. From this fundamental standpoint we can make a distinction between two 

forms of Psychology, only one of which is justified on the ground of its 
fundamental postulate in treating the Ego as a free agent ; the postulate 
in the one case being the deterministic assumption of the physical 
sciences, and in the other the assumption of a mutual independence of 
subject and object which is at one and the same time relative and real. 

12. A criticism of Prof. James's indeterministic position shows that Indeter- 

minism errs in three main ways : i° in its restricted, abstract point of 
view, 2 in its recourse to the Deus ex machina, and 3 in its formalism. 

Part II. The Psychology of First Causes: A Fundamental 
Distinction stated and applied 

1. Statement of the Distinction 

13. It is customary with psychologists to look upon the deterministic 

assumption as a necessary postulate of scientific inquiry. This is true 
of what is known as Empirical Psychology, whose method is essentially 
inductive. But Psychology may be treated from another and more 
inward point of view as a Science of Free Agency, and as such 
accepts as its fundamental assumption a certain relation between 
subject and object, which guarantees the real though relative in- 
dependence of the subject. This distinction is marked not only by 
a radical dissimilarity in the nature of the postulate, but by a corre- 
spondingly radical difference of method. 

2. Development of the Distinction 

14. A complete definition of Psychology should include a reference to the 

points of view from which it is to be studied. For the point of view 
determines the method, and the radical difference of method referred 
to above constitutes the best differentia between the two main forms of 
psychological treatment. The Inductive Method is not the only method 
for investigating the facts of the mental life. It is the method proper to 
the spectator's point of view. From the point of view of the experient 
himself, what is truly explanatory of his mental activity is not laws 
inductively reached, but final causes, ends of action, the synthetic 
principles through which the agent helps in creating his own destiny. 

15. Consciousness has for long been regarded as essentially a synthesis, but 

its unity has been persistently conceived as a combining form rather 
than as a causal agency. It is only recently that Dr. Stout's con- 



136 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

ception of the unity of consciousness as conative unity or unity of interest 
has brought the causal factor to the front. 

3. Application of the Distinction 

16. Ambiguities of a fundamental kind arise so soon as we ask ourselves 

what it is that we really mean when we call Psychology a Natural 
Science. Is it merely descriptive, or is it explanatory as well ? Is it a 
mechanical science or a teleological science, or both ? In what sense 
is it natural as opposed to normative ? In what sense is it natural as 
opposed to metaphysical ? The distinction already traced between 
the Inductive Psychology and the Psychology of First Causes will 
help us to unravel these ambiguities. 

17. i°. A discussion of the first difficulty shows us that Psychology is 

descriptive or explanatory according as it is studied from the spectator's 
point of view and by the Inductive Method, or from the inward point 
of view of the experient himself by the help of what may perhaps be 
called the Synthetic or Teleological Method. 

18. 2°. As a solution of the second ambiguity, we see that as a science 

of first causes Psychology is primarily and essentially teleological in 
its method, but that as an inductive inquiry its method is essentially 
mechanical. 

19. 3 . With regard to the relation in which Psychology stands to the 

Normative Sciences, it can be shown that the Psychology of first causes 
stands in a far more obvious and intimate relation to such a science as 
Logic or Ethics than does the purely empirical Psychology. 

20. Finally, 4 , touching the relation in which Psychology stands to Meta- 

physics, we find that whilst Inductive Psychology stands to Metaphysics 
in precisely the same relation as do the physical sciences, it is otherwise 
with the Psychology of first causes. It can, in fact, be shown that the 
distinction between the inductive and the teleological Psychologies affords 
a basis for a corresponding distinction in the relation of Metaphysics to 
Psychology. 

Part I. Freedom : A Defence and a Statement 

§ 1. The question of free-will owes its obscurity far less to 
its own inherent difficulty than to the perplexities which 
have been thrown in its way by the theory of universal 
determinism. Though there is overwhelming positive 
evidence in favour of free-will, evidence at least as strong 
in its own sphere as that of the inertia of matter in the 
sphere of abstract mechanics, there is still in many 
quarters a strong disposition to hold it as an illusion 
because of the difficulty it finds in adjusting itself to the 
demands of this insatiable theory. The problem is 
moreover gratuitously obscured through a certain over- 
considerateness on the part of the free-willists that 
completely succeeds in defeating its own end. Deter- 
minism of the strictest mechanical kind — so the agreement 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 137 

runs — shall have free sway over all the lower realm of 
matter in motion, provided only that the free subject be 
left to develop apart along spiritual lines according to its 
nature. This concession hard determinism smilingly 
accepts, and, on the strength of it, triumphs as assuredly 
as it does with all those schemata of psychophysical 
parallelism which are at bottom of its own making. 
It concerns us then to show that that soft determinism 
which fights freedom's battle whilst keeping aloof from 
the true fighting line and complacently yielding to the 
mechanical philosophy all its heart's desire, cannot possibly 
secure the freedom that it claims. We must insist on the 
fact that the only true champion of freedom is the hard- 
hitting anti-determinism that joins issue with mechanism 
along its own frontiers, stoutly maintaining its right to 
reclaim much of the ground that has been unlawfully 
appropriated by the mechanical philosophers. 

§ 2. As an instance of what Prof. James so aptly calls 
" soft " determinism, we may take the attitude adopted 
by one of our foremost thinkers. " Why object," writes 
Dr. Bosanquet, " to the mind being conditioned by the 
causation or machinery of the sequence of bodily states ? 
The important point is, what the thing actually is ; i.e., 
what is its nature, and in what does its organisation consist? 
We are quite accustomed to find that the things we value 
most have been able to develop through a system of 
mechanical causation," * and he adds elsewhere : " If you 
think the whole universe is mechanical or brute matter, 
then we can understand your trying to keep a little mystic 
shrine within the individual soul, which may be sacred 
from intrusion and different from everything else — a 
monad without windows. But if you are accustomed to 
take the whole as spiritual, and to find that the more you 
look at it as a whole the more spiritual it is, then you do 
not need to play these little tricks in order to get a last 
refuge for freedom by shutting out the universe." 2 

Now in answer to this we must say, with all respect, 
three things: — (1) We do not object to the mind being 

1 The Psychology of the Moral Self, p. 124. - Ibid. p. 9. 



138 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

conditioned by this mechanism, but object only to the 
indifference shown as to the amount or extent of the 
conditioning. The most exalted conception of my 
spiritual nature will be poor consolation if I have to 
recognise that my being here and not there in the body 
at any given instant is a fact determined entirely by 
mechanical considerations. (2) It is quite true that from 
the point of view of mind's capacity for freedom, its nature 
is the most important consideration, but whether such 
freedom is an illusion or not, depends entirely on whether 
it remains throughout this life of ours a mere capacity 
and nothing more, or an actual energy that does work 
after its own nature. But whether this is so or not 
depends again on whether the exigencies of mechanism 
really leave scope for it or not ; a permanent possibility 
of freedom is of no avail if a rigorous mechanism does all 
the work in its own rigid way. From the point of view 
of the free-will controversy the positive nature of mind is 
therefore not the essential thing, but rather its relation to 
matter and the laws of matter. (3) The question cannot 
be decided from the watch-tower of spiritualistic monism, 
for such spiritualism has no basis, much less a superstruc- 
ture, except in so far as it has won the ground it builds 
upon from the rapacity of a theory that claims the whole 
universe for its exclusive footing. And so long as that 
footing is held uncontested, no amount of spiritual 
complacency can avail anything. 

M. Fouillee is another soft determinist. Like Dr. 
Bosanquet and others of the same convictions he has in 
reserve a most valuable armoury to be used in freedom's 
cause when once freedom can find ground to stand upon 
and room to move in. " We are indeed children of the 
Cosmos," he says, 1 " yet, once brought forth and dowered 
with a brain, we possess stored up within us some of the 
conditions of change and movement which are found in 
Nature, a share in the causality of the universe, interpret 
that expression as you will ; if anything is active in this 
world of ours, we too are active ; if anything that is itself 

1 La Psychologie des Iddcs-Forces, Introduction, p. xxiv. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 139 

conditioned, conditions in its turn, we ourselves condition 
likewise. The line of connection between antecedent and 
consequent, whatever it may be, passes through us." But, 
we may ask, within a system of universal causality, 
however interpreted, what room is there for initiative ? 
An initiative that enters, it doesn't matter how, into any 
closed system of antecedents and consequents is itself 
determined, not by itself but by the antecedents. That 
which conditions after being conditioned is simply trans- 
mitting, not initiating, some capacity to condition which 
originates, we must suppose, with some great far-off First 
Cause. If we are children of the Cosmos in this sense 
we are at best mere accumulators of potential spiritual 
energy which, at the prick of some antecedent, passes into 
the kinetic and actual forms. This conclusion is not at 
all modified by M. Fouillee's repeatedly emphasised dis- 
tinction between mechanical and spiritual determinism. 
Both are determinisms, that is the main point, the one 
hard and rigid, the other soft and flexible. Thus we read 
in the second volume of the Idees- Forces : " If the facts of 
Psychology cannot be truly brought under the idea of 
mechanism, they stand in no such intractable relation to 
the idea of determinism, provided that by determinism we 
understand something far more complex and at the same 
time more flexible than the determinism of the philo- 
sophers, notably the associationists ; " x and on another 
page of the same treatise, " Psychological determinism is 
doubtless much more flexible, indefinite, incalculable, than 
is physiological determinism, still, from our point of view, 
it is none the less a determinism." 2 Now this pliant 
conception of determinism resembles nothing so much as 
the easy indeterminism which M. Fouillee so resolutely 
opposes. Thus in his essay on the " Dilemma of Deter- 
minism," Prof. James writes as follows : — " Indeterminism 
says that the parts have a certain amount of loose play on 
one another," and again, " Indeterminism thus denies the 
world to be one unbending unit of fact " ; 3 and the 

1 Fouillee, La Psychologie des I dies- Forces, ii. p. 282. 2 Ibid. i. p. 267. 

3 James, The Will to Believe and other Essays, p. 150. 



1 4 o W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

language undoubtedly suits the needs of Indeterminism 
much better than it can do those of Determinism, however 
soft and yielding. 

Are we then after the example of James himself, to 
find refuge from our chafe against the flexibilities of free 
determinism in the shapeless arms of indeterminism? Such 
a reactionary movement is, as we shall try to point out 
later, needlessly heroic. Is it not possible, we ask, to 
cleave to the ancient name of Freedom without posing 
either as an indeterminist or as a determinist, rigid, soft, 
or free ? We hold that it is certainly possible, and hope 
to justify the distinction in the sequel ; meantime, with 
this end in view, we may return with advantage to the 
main line of our argument. 

§ 3. The soft determinist, as already remarked, has a ten- 
dency to put matter in motion completely under the control 
of the mechanical philosopher, complacently believing that 
whatever conclusions the latter may legitimately come to, 
on his own ground, will undergo spiritual renewal and 
take on the meaning of liberty so soon as they come 
under the transfiguring spell of some higher category. 
Such complacency is, however, most inopportune, for the 
concession it so gracefully yields up is all that the 
mechanical theory needs or asks for; for in virtue of it the 
body of the free-minded philosopher down to its minutest 
tremors is at once most ruthlessly enslaved : he cannot 
even extend his generous hand without simply carrying out 
a predetermined necessity of action which the Laplacean 
calculator could have foreseen emerging at the birth of 
time from the original nebula. 

Let us now press this issue more closely, and ask 
wherein this concession precisely consists. There is, I 
think, a difference of point of view here which is the 
cause of much confusion. The apologist of mind is very 
apt to think that the only reserve he need make when 
dealing with the mechanical philosopher is to point out 
that the matter in motion committed into the hands of 
the latter has a certain aspect which cannot in any way 
concern his physics. It is not only extended and inert 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 141 

and so on, but it is knowable. The idealist, of the type 
we are considering, seems to imagine that, when considered 
afresh as knowledge, matter in motion will become duly 
penetrated with such spiritual meaning as will lift it 
entirely beyond the reach of the physicist. Meanwhile 
the living body pays the penalty of the spirit's tran- 
scendentalism, the physicist taking care of that in his 
own way. The mechanical philosopher, in other words, 
considers the concession from an entirely different point 
of view. As sole trustee of matter in motion he at once 
safeguards his interests by insisting on the doctrine that 
only matter in motion can determine in any way the 
movements of matter. This is how he understands the 
concession. 

Here then is the crucial statement definitely stated : 
" Only matter in motion can be a determinant of material 
changes," and the psychologist must either allow its validity 
or at once reject it as insufficiently verified. We will 
suppose that he does the former, and on this assumption 
follow the concession into its various consequences. 

The concession once made by the apologist of mental 
agency, his opponent, the naturalist, approaching him 
in Socratic fashion asks him whether he believes that 
mind determines the movements of matter. If the 
psychologist forgets himself sufficiently in the truth of 
things and answers in the affirmative, he is handed the 
following syllogism to reflect over : — 

Whatever determines movements of matter is itself 

matter in motion. 
Mind determines movements of matter. 
.'. Mind is itself matter in motion. 

Ergo : You are a materialist. 

If this bait fails, however, the second is sure to succeed. 
For when the psychologist, repudiating all connection with 
materialism protests that he does not believe that mind is 
matter in motion, that, in fact, mind is not matter in 
motion, his opponent is at once able to answer him as 
follows : — You admit then the two following premises : 



142 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

1. Whatever determines movements of matter is 

itself matter in motion. 

2. Mind is not matter in motion ; 

you must therefore admit the following conclusion : 

Mind does not determine the movements of matter. 
Ergo : You are a supporter of the Conscious 
Automaton Theory. 

Now there is no escaping from this cruel alternative, 
once the major premise has been conceded. This is 
shown on a big scale by the later history of Philosophy. 
The Barbara syllogism was tried first and accepted by 
Holbach, Lamettrie, Helvetius and the rest. It was the 
hey-day of Materialism. Gradually it became obvious 
that such materialism was ridiculous, consciousness being 
irreducible to a mode of motion. Camestres then came 
into favour, and psychophysical parallelism into vogue. 
Yes, and in our own day when so many find shelter 
under the shadow of Huxley and Avenarius, this second 
syllogism is still cherished as the germ and root of all 
true Philosophy. 

§ 4. What then are we to do ? One of two things. We 
must either push on or retrace our steps, for to stand 
where we are is to confess ourselves beaten. Either way 
is a way out. Formally, the push-ahead method is the 
better of the two ; i.e., if we can show that the conclusion 
of the second syllogism is quite as ridiculous as the 
conclusion of the first, that it is quite as absurd to reduce 
consciousness to complete inactivity as it is to reduce 
it to a calculable mode of motion, we shall make it 
impossible for our opponent to ferret out new middle 
terms in order to prove the same old conclusion in 
different ways, for the conclusion will have been disproved 
once and for all. 1 

1 Moreover, we shall have the pleasure of meeting with Scepticism on the 
way, for wherever there is a formally valid syllogism with a conclusion proved 
to be materially false, and with premises asserted to be obvious, there will 
Scepticism be found. Scepticism in fact is none other than an attitude of 
philosophical sulks which persists in obstinately sticking to premises though all 
the conclusions to which they lead have had to be given up. ' ' I have one 
conclusion in reserve," it says, "which becomes the more convincing the more 



m THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 143 

We have then two methods of procedure open to us, 
the push -ahead method of contradicting the conclusion 
of a syllogism and the falling-back method of retracting 
the admission that led to all the trouble. Let us consider 
more closely the logical relation between them. 

§5. It is important in the first place to notice what 
is involved in the retracting of an admission. Such 
retraction simply means non-acceptance of the retracted 
statement as a proved statement ; it does not imply any 
ability to disprove it even by a single instance. It says : 
" I see now that I was not justified in accepting that 
fateful major premise as obvious or proved, nor do I 
consider myself bound to accept it until you can 
completely verify it." On the other hand, the flat 
contradiction of the conclusion that mind does not 
determine material changes requires much more than 
this. A direct proof that in at least one instance or 
class of instances mind does actually determine the 
movements of matter would of course be the most 
satisfactory way of meeting the requirement. Such a 
direct proof is, however, out of the question since we 
have not yet discovered how it is that mind, qua mind, 
can come into contact with matter at all. The assertion 
is, however, capable of a very stringent indirect proof. 
This indirect proof in its primitive and essential bearing, 
consists in a reductio ad absurdum of the conclusion we 
wish to contradict ; and indeed the proposition that mind 
has its share in determining material changes is quite 
sufficiently established by the absurdities to which the 
contradictory assertion inevitably leads, as Dr. Ward in 
his Gifford Lectures has so ably shown. 1 Still, the 
indirect proof remains incomplete so long as it leaves 
unanswered certain objections that are at once raised 

you demolish all the others, for these serve as premises for it just in proportion 
as they are proved absurd." And this is the final syllogism : — 

A mode of reasoning according to which conclusions necessarily inferred 
from obvious premises are yet demonstrably absurd is not to be trusted. 

Now the process by which we human beings acquire Knowledge is just such 
a mode of reasoning. 

Therefore, Knowledge is not to be trusted. 

1 Cf. also Sigwart, Logic, Eng. trans. , ii. pp. 388-393. 



144 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

by the naturalist so soon as the result of the reductio ad 
absurdum proof is stated in the positive form, " Mind 
therefore, is a determinant of mental change." 1 We 
shall come across these by-and-by. 

We proceed now to develop these two lines of 
defence : — 

1. The retraction of the major ; 

2. The contradiction of the conclusion. 

§ 6. i. The retraction of the major of the Naturalistic 
Syllogism. — The retraction of the major is, as we have 
seen, equivalent to the request that the mechanical 
philosopher will please verify his statement before he 
presses us to accept it ; and our main business is to see 
clearly what this demand for verification really involves. 
It is in the first place most essential to note that the 
demand must not be addressed to physical science as 
such. Physical science has no ears for such a question. 
If the physicist deigns to reply at all, he will say 
something of this kind. " You are laying your meddle- 
some hand on the great regulative principle which defines 
the nature and meaning of my science. You are asking 
me to verify the principle upon which all my verifications 
are based. I can no more fall in with your request than 
Euclid could have done had he been asked for a proof 
of his own axioms, or the great Stagirite himself, had 
a proof of his Principle of Contradiction been demanded 
of him." This language is not exaggerated. The 
physicist, qua physicist, is perfectly justified in resenting 
as an impertinence the demand that he shall prove the 
principle which at every step of his work determines 
the direction of his inquiry. An illustration from 
Astronomical Science may help to make our meaning 
clear. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century 
certain puzzling irregularities were observed in the 

1 This contradiction of the conclusion indeed requires, as we have already 
hinted, more of the negator than the denial of the major premise itself involves ; 
for in the latter case it is only necessary to show that something other than 
matter in motion can set matter in motion, whereas the denial of the conclusion 
requires the special proof that the movements of matter can be determined 
by mind. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 145 

movements of the planet Uranus. There were two 
conceivable ways of hypothetically explaining these 
irregularities. Either Uranus was being disturbed by 
the influence of matter in motion elsewhere, or by some 
volitional agency of more than human power. This 
second alternative was not in itself inconceivable. It 
was inadmissible only as a scientific explanation. It was 
an alternative that Astronomy could not possibly have 
admitted without ipso facto admitting that it had reached 
the limits of the science, i.e. without ceasing to be 
Astronomy. Suppose, however, that some incalculable 
demon had really been responsible for the perturbations. 
Could Astronomy, we ask, have ever found it out ? By no 
means. It would be still puzzling its mighty intellect 
for a mechanical solution and meanwhile be blaming its 
telescopes, the irreflecting nature of the surface of the 
disturbing body, its extraordinary density that left it too 
small for visibility just there where it ought to have been, 
etc., etc., and so it would go puzzling on for ever, 
readjusting its hypotheses, even that of gravitation itself, 
if necessary, in order to render the phenomenon 
mechanically intelligible. It would, in fact, simply repeat 
over again in its improved modern way, those processes 
of adjusting and readjusting epicycles and excentrics 
which were forced by the same respect for postulates 
upon the bewildered observers of the Middle Ages. 

So much for the physicist, qua physicist, and his 
connection with the matter. Regulative principles, qua 
regulative principles, must be left severely alone. They 
are principles for working with and not for discussing. 

We must turn then to the philosopher in physics who in 
the capacity of naturalist first forced upon our attention 
the doctrine we are disputing. We must demand our 
verification from him. What then does the mechanical 
philosopher say by way of justifying the statement that 
he makes ? He puts himself at the outset under the 
shadow of the physicists. " The physicist," we hear him 
say, " is of course quite right in having nothing to do 
with you. All the material sciences presuppose the non- 

L 



146 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

interference of mind. They stipulate in the first place 
that whatever is subjective in sensation or opinion shall 
be winnowed away by objective verification, and pre- 
suppose in the second place that such objective verification 
is not thwarted by the caprice of some incalculable demon 
or other untraceable volitional agency." "Now this silence 
on the part of Physics," he continues, " is the best proof 
possible of the real truth of its regulative principle : it is 
being perpetually verified by its fruits. Apart from the 
living body all moving matter has already been deanthro- 
pomorphised, while as regards the living body itself, our 
mechanical physiologists are busy deanthropomorphising 
that, and are proving successful beyond expectation. 
Indeed it is becoming abundantly clear that it is only the 
complexity of this material that now stands in their way, 
and that when that difficulty has been overcome, there 
will be nothing occult or undetermined, even in the 
most sprightly of men. The spins and rolls and intimate 
twists of a man's body will then be seen to be as 
mechanically unidetermined as are the motions of a 
spinning-top, a billiard ball, or a screw." Now there is 
only one answer to this, the simple reminder, namely, that 
uniform success in the application of any working principle 
to any subject-matter does not verify it in those special 
regions where it has not yet been applied, and that where 
great spiritual issues seem to depend on its not being 
universally applicable to the subject-matter in question 
there is every reason to cry out " unproven !" even though 
your opponent is seated triumphantly on the Milky Way 
and you are squeezed between the inner and the outer 
rinds of a man's brain. If the physiologist were ever 
able, in detail, to show that all the molecular movements 
in a living body were entirely determined by mechanical 
relations, then the idea of psychical guidance would be 
exploded. " Thereafter," as Dr. Ward puts it, " the idea 
of psychical guidance would not conflict with a theory, it 
would be refuted by facts." x But no such verification 
is forthcoming. Physiology has not shown that its 

1 Naturalism and Ag?iosticism, ii. p. 71. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 147 

subject-matter is coextensive with the sum-total of the 
molecular changes within the organism. As a science it 
is deanthropomorphic by definition ; its assumptions and 
methods are mechanical, but the life it studies is not 
therefore deanthropomorphised. It has not yet proved 
that there are no eminent causes, 1 no body set in motion 
by mind. It only assumes that there are none, and works 
upon that assumption. Psychology must see that a 
methodological assumption is not stiffened into an axiom, 
and in the meantime rest content that its fundamental 
belief in the reality of effective psychical initiative and 
guidance is at least not disproved by physical science, 
since the latter has failed to prove that certain physical 
events within the living organism may not have other 
than physical conditions. 

§ 7. This, I fancy, is the only way in which the ad- 
vancing tide of matter can be restrained from that undue 
encroachment upon the frontier-shores of mind which, if 
demonstrably successful, would reduce Psychology to the 
level of a Science of pure Illusion. I can think of only 
one other suggestion for coping with the difficulty, as 
alluring as it is inadmissible. Why not state frankly, so 
it may be urged, that this demand for verification is a 
demand which Science by its very nature is precluded 
from satisfying ? The movements wherein freedom finds 
expression, are they not of that highly individualised type 
which Science, on account of its general character, cannot 
possibly bring under its control ? Does not Science fix 
and universalise whatsoever it touches, can it ever take 
into consideration at all motions which being under an 
individual's control, will never recur again under precisely 
the same conditions ? And if this is the case, can we not 
conclude that Science on account of the uniform generality 
of its processes is for ever debarred from investigating the 
individualised movements of living bodies in motion, and 
hence for ever debarred from disproving the assertion of 
immediate experience, that mind can help in determining 
the movements of matter ? 

1 Cf. Ward, id. ii. p. 73. 



148 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

This specious plea that the real unknowable for Science 
is the individual element, and that this individual element 
is precisely what is involved in the assertion of free-will 
cannot be seriously entertained in this connection, for the 
simple reason that to hold the individual thus beyond the 
reach of Science is either to beg the whole question or to 
underestimate the possibilities of Science. The only 
individuality we can here be dealing with is the atomic 
individuality of matter in motion, and this being so, a 
judicious use of the scientific imagination will, I think, 
enable us to picture to ourselves how Science could 
grapple with the difficulty which such material individu- 
ality presents. We must imagine a wonderfully-devised 
instrument, a combination of biograph, stereoscope, and 
improved Rontgen apparatus, which could be so worked 
as to reproduce in its own mechanical way upon a screen 
all the motions of all the individual cells of a living body, 
and with it the environment with which the body happened 
to be in immediate contact during any continuous lapse 
of time. Let us further suppose that this instrument is 
helped out by a microscope that can indefinitely increase 
the spatial dimensions of things, and that an indefinitely 
slow motion in time is secured through an extraordinary 
perfection of the biograph section of the instrument, on a 
principle similar to that which now enables scientists to 
study at leisure, in its successive stages, the moment's 
history of the splash of a drop. The record once taken 
would be indefinitely reproducible, so that the objection as 
to the uniqueness of the momentary states of brain and 
body would cease to exist. The conditions under which 
the movements took place could always be renewed. 
The mechanical philosopher would then be able to follow 
in detail the movements of each individual cell, follow 
each remotest tremor to its source in the periphery or 
central organ, and so eventually have the chance of putting 
his regulative principle to its final test. Of course it 
would not be necessary, so far as verification of the point 
at issue is concerned, to study more than one typical 
instance, provided it were really typical. The individual 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 149 

whose motions were thus being recorded would have to 
be taken when he was deliberately excercising his will 
with a knowledge of the issues involved. 

We may consider ourselves then fully justified in 
pressing the mechanical philosopher for the verification 
of " that most unwarrantable assumption " that, whatever 
determines the movements of matter is itself matter in 
motion, and in building up our mental philosophies 
meanwhile, on the assumption that it will never be 
verified, and that a conscious effort of the mind can 
bear its associated body at any time in an absolutely 
unpredictable direction, and to an absolutely unforeseeable 
distance in that direction. The element of weakness 
involved in this attitude may be summed up in the fact 
that, from the standpoint of this argument, we are always 
exposed to the bare possibility of having to confess in 
some dim future age that our opponent's statement has 
been duly verified and must be accepted. Still the 
possibilities of such verification, in the problem under 
discussion, are so immeasurably remote that they may 
be treated as infinitesimals of an infra-logical order and 
be entirely neglected. Such neglect may moreover prove 
to be strictly justified by the results reached along the 
second line of procedure wherein we contradict the 
conclusion of the naturalistic syllogism by the help of 
a reductio ad absurdum, to which second defence we now 
proceed. 

I 8. 2. The contradiction of the conclusion of the natural- 
istic syllogism by means of a reductio ad absurdum. — The 
thesis that mind can not in any way determine material 
movements, that, as Dr. Sigwart puts it, " we stand in no 
other relation to our bodies than to the motion of the 
fixed stars " 1 is one of the most extraordinary paradoxes 
that the wit of man has ever propounded. We must 
try and show that it is also one of the most absurd. Its 
essential purport is, that all material changes that occur 
in the body or out of it, take place in entire indifference 
as to whether they chance to be accompanied by con- 

1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 391. 



ISO W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

sciousness or not. Consciousness is only an echo, a 
shadow, an epiphenomenon, an emanation from nowhere, 
that appears so soon as certain essential conditions are 
realised, e.g., the sufficient nutrition of the various parts 
of the nervous system, and disappears with the disappear- 
ance of any one of these essential conditions, but neither 
its coming nor its staying nor its going concerns in any 
way anything but itself. Thus, according to the theory 
we are criticising, the movements of the pen with which 
these words are written and the written words themselves 
are, as movements and products of movement, perfectly 
independent of the instinct and the thought that find 
expression through them : they would have come to pass 
in precisely this way and no other had the last spark 
of consciousness flickered away countless ages ago ; and 
the reader who interprets the printed type and lingers 
over some sentence, his whole statuesque attitude, 
whatever it be, was a foregone conclusion when the 
first atom in space gave its first little shiver. 

To describe such paradoxes as these is really to 
explain them away : they shrivel off in their own light. 
Still it is best to seize even an absurdity by some 
tangible handle. Let us then replace the somewhat 
vague conception of " mind " by the much clearer one 
of " meaning," and ask ourselves whether any theory 
that makes meaning ineffectual in determining the 
movements of one's body can evade the charge of 
absurdity ? Let us take two or three definite instances. 
Consider for a moment the import that the words " yes " 
and " no " have on certain critical occasions. " Yes " 
sets the young blood careering in all directions, " no " 
determines for the body the attitude typical of wounded 
pride, misery, or despair. Shall we say that this 
difference is simply the difference in organic reverberation 
consequent on the difference in tympanal flutter due to 
two such different air-vibrations as that set going by a nasal 
and that other set going by a sibilant ? Or take another 
instance. A goes up to B as he leans with his back to 
the mantelpiece and tells him in French that his coat- 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 151 

tails are on fire. The organic result is imperceptible. 
He repeats the statement in English and B's whole body 
instantaneously reacts. Or again you insult A, who 
happens to be deaf, and he smiles at you ; you treat B 
to the same epithets, and he flings you them back in 
scorn. Meaning and Motion are then unquestionably 
connected in this sense that that which is not matter 
in motion, namely meaning, is yet an important deter- 
minant of material changes, and the theory that compels 
us to deny the connection in this sense is hopelessly 
absurd. 

§ 9. There seems to be but one intelligible retort to 
this charge of absurdity. It takes the " tu quoque " form, 
" I'm mad, that's true, but so are you." This retort 
consists in bringing forward certain important objections 
to the statement that mind can determine material 
changes with the conviction that they are unanswerable, 
so that when the final reckoning is made the most 
formidable verdict for the critic of naturalism will be 
that thesis and antithesis are equally absurd, that it 
is just as impossible to maintain that mind can determine 
matter as it is to maintain that it cannot. 

a. Let us start with the most frequent as well as the 
most superficial objection that is raised by Naturalism 
to the idea that mind can determine the movement of 
matter. The statement, it is urged, is incompatible with 
the great principle of the Conservation of Energy. Let 
us briefly examine this objection. It starts with assuming 
that mind or mental activity can only control matter 
on condition of introducing into or abstracting from 
the material system a certain supply of fresh energy 
or capacity for physical work, and this it is maintained 
is quite out of the question. And the reason given is 
simply this, that the amount of energy in the material 
universe is constant. 

Now, in the first place this statement is far from 
being the record of an ascertained fact. What physicist 
has ever established an equation between the whole 
energy of the universe at any time, including the energies 



152 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

of all the stars of heaven and all the cells of all living 
bodies, and its energy at a subsequent moment of time. 
No physicist, we may safely say, has ever dreamt of 
such an equation. The equation of constancy is in 
fact a most unjustifiable extension in indefinitum of 
the well-known equation of equivalence. The fallacy 
involved in this extension is picturesquely exposed by 
Dr. Ward. " Those who insist that the quantity of this 
energy in the universe must be constant seem to me," 
says Dr. Ward, " in the same position as one who should 
maintain that the quantity of water in a vast lake must 
be constant merely because the surface was always level, 
though he could never reach its shores nor fathom its 
depth." l 

This remark leads us on at once to our second point, 
to wit, that the so-called principle of the constancy of 
energy has not even the hypothetical necessity of a 
regulative principle of Physics. What guides the 
physicist in forming his energy -equations is not the 
idea of the constancy of energy within the universe, but 
that of the balance of energy about any given change as 
fulcrum. The energy -level must remain constantly the 
same. There must be equivalence between the distribu- 
tion of energy within the system under consideration 
and any subsequent redistribution of this energy within 
the system. The " constancy of energy " as a postulate 
of physics comes indeed to nothing more than this. 
" Given a finite, known quantity of physical energy — 
energy, that is, which has its mechanical equivalent — - 
then if that energy be measured after any transformation, 
it must be precisely equivalent in amount to the original 
quantity." It is stipulated, in other words, that lost 
energy can always be found again provided the precise 
amount lost is known. There is no attempt to deal 
with the whole amount of energy in the universe at 
any time, a perfectly indefinite, incalculable quantum. 
The assumption of constancy is therefore not in any 
way the physicist's assumption. Just as the postulate 

Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 76. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 153 

of the indestructibility of matter is really nothing more 
than the balance of weights after a chemical change, 
so that of the indestructibility of energy is nothing more 
than the mathematical balance — in terms of mechanical 
equivalents — between the capacity for work within a 
certain closed system before a certain amount of actual 
work is done, and the capacity for work within the same 
closed system after the transformation has taken place. 
The first postulate has meaning only in so far as bodies 
have weight, the second only in so far as energies have 
their mechanical equivalent ; in either case, to express 
the matter more generally and more accurately, the 
postulate has meaning only in so far as the possession 
of a common denominator enables it to be made. 

Now when the constancy of energy is understood 
in this strictly economical and scientific sense, the 
interpretation cannot in any way demand the exclusion 
of mind from among the possible determinants of material 
changes, except as a convenient, or rather, necessary 
postulate for the working purposes of physics, — without 
making the assumption that the truth of a principle 
within a closed circle of material agency sufficiently 
justifies the inference that material things must under 
all circumstances form a circle closed on all sides. 1 Here 
again we have to defend the rights of spirit and spon- 
taneity by insisting that Physical Science shall not make 
statements that stultify all spiritual life and make history 
ridiculous unless it be prepared to prove them to the 
hilt. The conservation of energy is quite incapable 
of any such proof, and Naturalism would do well to 
ponder over these words of Dr. Sigwart : — " Even if 
equivalence between all chemical events and mechanical 
motion, heat, electricity, etc., were fully established 
empirically, yet we could be certain of the truth of 
the principle only within the sphere in which its deter- 
minations were obtained, in those purely physical and 
chemical events of inorganic nature which we reduce 
to exact casual laws in such a way that every event may 

1 Cf. Sigwart, Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 387. 



154 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON in 

be calculated from its conditions." But in Psychology 
we have not the same footing. The possibility of stating 
the amount of potential energy stored up in a sperma- 
tozoon or a germ " is a hypothesis justified upon Methodo- 
logical grounds, but not a proved proposition." x 

The result of this discussion may be explicitly stated 
as follows. It has shown that the doctrine of the 
Conservation of Energy can offer no decisive objection 
to the theory that mind controls matter by actually 
increasing or diminishing the amount of energy in the 
universe. It was important that we should gain this 
concession from our opponents. We could indeed have 
evaded the whole argument had we been content to allow 
that mental control over matter can take effect without 
any energy being introduced into or withdrawn from the 
physical universe ; for once we allow that mind while 
controlling and directing energy, is yet not a source of 
energy, we have no cause of dispute with the principle of 
Conservation. Energy being directionless or rudderless — 
to use Dr. Ward's expression — mind could then play the 
part of a rudder without interfering with the unconditional 
integrity of the principle in question. But such evasion, 
like many another, would have been worse than profitless. 
The concession, while it gave a handle to the mechanical 
philosopher for effective purposes of counter -thrust, 
avails the conceder nothing. For the principle of the 
Conservation of Momentum which takes direction of 
motion as well as velocity into account is ready to 
swallow up what the Conservation of Energy can spare. 
As soon as mind makes its modest attempt to direct the 
dance of the vital molecules without putting into its work 
any physical energy, contriving to push constantly at 
right angles to the direction of motion with the ideal 
accuracy of the mathematician, it is snapped up as 
trangressing the inviolable unideterminism of physical 
changes — and this is the root of the whole mechanical 
theory — according to which not only the energy but the 
direction of motion of every atom of matter is pre- 

1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 384. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 155 

determined from the very outset. 1 Energy is directionless 
not in the sense of drifting chancewise at every turn but 
in the sense of its being a function of velocity only, 
and not of this velocity's direction. It is directionless only 
when abstracted in thought from the matter that embodies 
it : the moving matter itself, as the physicist conceives it, 
moves eternally along in its predetermined courses, and 
its capacity for work goes with it. In a word there can be 
no loopholes in a system which is based on the postulate 
that there shall be none. " That a rigorous determination 
is deducible from the mechanical scheme is due to the 
fact that it has been put into the fundamental premises." 2 
j3. A somewhat deeper-going objection to the theory of 
mind's control over matter suggests itself naturally at this 
point of our inquiry. Granted that it has been shown 
that as a statement of fact the objection grounded on the 
Conservation of Energy is baseless, and that it is equally 
impossible to maintain that the doctrine has any binding 
claim over our thought, it may yet be urged that inas- 
much as our theory expresses a causal relation between 
mind and matter, it violates the meaning of the causal 
concept and is therefore inadmissible. But before we 
fall in with this objection let us look well at the causal 
chain with which our objector proposes to fetter us, and 
fix our attention, in particular, on its three main links. 
Each of these, we find, bears its own peculiar inscription. 
On the first we read that there must be quantitative 
equivalence between cause and effect ; on the second that 
there must be qualitative likeness or homogeneity between 
cause and effect, and on the third that the connection 
between cause and effect must be scientifically conceivable. 
Now we propose to show that these conditions which the 
all -enslaving naturalist imposes on his conception of 

1 The same fundamental objection applies to Sigwart's own footnote suggestion 
(Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 386) that it might be possible to maintain the 
hypothesis that the physical law of energy remained intact, and that only the 
conditions of the transition from active energy into potential, and vice versa, vary 
with relations to psychical states. 

See also Petzoldt, Einfiihrung in die Philosophie der Reinen Erfahrung, 
Leipsic, 1900, Part I. ch. i. especially p. 16. 

2 Dr. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 67. 



156 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

Causality, far from constituting the essential and obligatory 
definition of the causal concept, are not only unnecessary 
in themselves but implicitly recognised as unnecessary by 
Science herself. 

The first link in this triple objection to the idea of 
a causal psychical control over matter consists essentially 
in the assertion that as we cannot measure psychical 
events as we can physical events, there is no possibility of 
a causal nexus between them. That we cannot measure 
psychical events as we can physical events needs no 
proving but, as Dr. Sigvvart reminds us, " even in the 
region of Natural Science, many causal connections have 
been accepted as existing beyond doubt, and regarded as 
inductively proved, before their equations were known ; 
that friction produces heat and that heat, through the 
expansion of steam, gives rise to motion, was ascertained 
before Mayer and Joule had found the equations which 
enabled them to calculate how much of the heat produced 
changes into motion, and how much is useless for the 
purposes of the steam-engine." 1 Similarly if we take the 
connection between an effort and the consequent muscular 
activity, noting how the work of the muscles increases 
with the amount of exertion, we see that though we 
cannot measure exactly the intensity of the effort made, 
we have still as much a right to consider as causal the 
connection between effort and muscular contraction as we 
had the original connection between friction and heat. 

On the second link we have the hoary adage " like 
can only be produced by like." Dr. Ward has helped us 
to a better grasp of what this adage implies, by reviving 
the old Cartesian distinction between the causa eminens 
and the causa formalis. " Thus if one body is set in 
motion by another, the motion is produced formaliter in 
the Cartesian sense ; but if a body were set in motion by 
mind, such motion would be produced eminenter." 2 Now 
this heterogeneity of nature which, in the case of mind and 
matter, is supposed by Naturalism to constitute a chasm 

1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 384. 
2 Dr. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 73. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 157 

unspannable by any causal bridge, is characteristic not 
only of eminent but also of formal causes. Is it not Lotze 
who reminds us that the action between two material 
bodies, if we only look deep enough, is quite as mys- 
terious as interaction of the eminent kind ? To the 
physicist who looks no further than his figures there is 
of course all the difference in the world between the 
mathematically calculable character of the former, and 
the incalculable character of the latter, but this is a 
question that concerns merely the value of the causal 
idea for physical purposes, not the nature of the idea 
itself. Moreover, since the category of reciprocity has 
come into vogue, the unit of causal action is taken to be 
an interaction between two substances, forces, or factors, 
and the question as to the respective natures of agens 
and patiens regarded as irrelevant, from the point of 
view of causality, agens and patie?is developing the 
interchange, each according to its own nature. 

The third link introduces us to that mole-like creature, 
the " Inconceivable," whose grasp of facts is literally 
determined by the reach of its own nose. Now, when 
reach and grasp are co-extensive, it generally happens 
that the common horizon is determined by the limits of 
sense-perception. Thus when the brilliant imagination 
of Prof. James is baffled by the fact of mental activity, 
and he declares that mental activity is probably a mere 
" postulate " because no amount of introspection can 
possibly reveal it, he is simply identifying the inconceiv- 
able with the unintuitable. But if this unintuitable 
character of the action between mind and matter is the 
obstacle alluded to in the motto on the third link, it is 
an objection that applies in another and more funda- 
mental way to all the connections which thought establishes. 
" It is no objection," writes Sigwart in a striking passage, 
" that we can form no intuitable picture of what takes 
place," for " what we can intuit is never more than the 
event and the linking of events, never the fact that the 
one is grounded by the other. For ordinary conscious- 
ness the connection between my will and the motion of 



158 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

my arm is just as intuitable, i.e. just as firmly grounded 
in immediate experience and association, as the trans- 
mission of a shock from one billiard ball to another ; it 
may be, indeed, that we should find the latter even less 
comprehensible, if we had not been previously familiar 
with our power of thrusting a body away by a voluntary 
movement of the hand." l 

The objection of inconceivability may, however, bear, 
not on the unintuitable character of mind's action on 
matter, but on its intractability, on the fact that science 
is perfectly nonplussed by it. This may well be, but 
when so stated, the objection ceases to be directed at its 
former mark. It no longer urges that mental control over 
matter cannot be causal, on the ground that it is unin- 
tuitable and therefore inconceivable, but only lays stress 
on the fact that this admittedly causal relation is quite 
unanalysable. Indeed Dr. Ward himself brings forward 
this objection. " It must be candidly confessed," he says, 
" that, however much we insist on the fact that mind can 
direct and control inert mass, we are quite unable to 
analyse the process." 2 This is only too true. Had it 
been otherwise the objections of determinism would have 
admitted of being attacked directly, instead of by the 
indirect methods we were compelled to adopt. 

If we may indulge the hope, at this point of our 
inquiry, that the objections of hard determinism have 
been sufficiently met, and that the concessions of soft 
determinism have been shown to yield more than the 
problem of Freedom can spare, we may, I think, turn 
with a good conscience to the task of clearly defining 
our relations with Indeterminism, or, as it is sometimes 
called, Libertarianism. 

§ 10. Now the present writer must frankly confess that 
of the two objectors to mechanical determinism, the flexible 
determinist on the one hand, and the bold indeterminist 
on the other, he has the greater sympathy with the 
latter, and considers him the more valuable champion of 

1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 387. 
2 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 85. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 159 

free-will, in so far at least as the ground-work of the 
problem is concerned. It seems impossible not to agree 
with Prof. James in saying that once a man's alleged 
spontaneity is completely at the mercy of its antecedents 
and concomitants it is logically indifferent what these 
determinants may be, whether of the crow-bar or the 
velvety type, whether they constitute a nexus of cranial 
motions and dispositions, or a nexus of motives, character, 
and circumstance. Whether the predetermination be 
physical or psychical the result is in both cases the 
same : the act of spirit could not have been other than 
it was. 

It is under the heating influence of this conviction 
that Professor James throws the deterministic mechanism 
for guiding free-will completely overboard and commits 
himself heroically to the rudderless steersmanship of 
chance. " Determinism," he says— and under the title 
he includes the soft as well as the hard species — " denies 
the ambiguity of future volitions, because it affirms that 
nothing future can be ambiguous." l Indeterminism on 
the other hand affirms this ambiguity unequivocally, and 
gives it its true unequivocal name " Chance." " Inde- 
terminate future volitions," we read, " mean chance " 2 
" Whoever uses the word chance, instead of freedom," 
adds our author some pages further on, " squarely and 
resolutely gives up all pretence to control the things he 
says are free. . . . It is a word of impotence, and is 
therefore the only sincere word we can use, if, in grant- 
ing freedom to certain things, we grant it honestly, and 
really risk the game. Any other word permits of 
quibbling, and lets us, after the fashion of the soft de- 
terminists, make a pretence of restoring the caged bird 
to liberty with one hand, while with the other we 
anxiously tie a string to its leg to make sure it does 
not get beyond our sight." 

Now it is hard to feel ungratefully towards such 
refreshing similes as these, but the word " chance " is 

1 Essay on "The Dilemma of Determinism" in the vol. entitled The Will 
to Believt and Other Essays, p. 158. 2 Ibid. 



160 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

surely too desperate. Though under the magical touch 
of the great psychologist it puts on the beautiful appeal 
of a free gift — the idea of chance being at bottom, so 
we are told, exactly the same thing as the idea of gift, — 
even this cannot conceal its utter spiritual nakedness. 
In James's own words " it is a word of impotence," and 
seems to betoken a spirit not our own that works for 
chaos, a comet-like visitant that flaunts its own caprice 
in our bewildered faces rather than the essence of our 
own selves working for freedom and order. 

But, comes the protest, is it not more impotent still 
to sit on the fence lamenting both the impotence of the 
spirit fettered by a flexible fate and the equally im- 
potent condition of the spirit through which, as through 
a reed, the breath of Chance bloweth where it listeth, 
than it would be to trust oneself resolutely to the one 
issue or to the other ? Yes, we answer, it surely is, so 
long as we are limited to a fictitious partition between 
two equally illogical alternatives, but we beg leave to 
protest against this arbitrary restriction both of our 
problem and of our preference. 

And here we touch the heart of the whole matter : 
to wit, the narrowness of the issue as it is presented 
by the Indeterminist, and as it is characteristically 
accepted by the flexible determinist. The Indeterminist, 
like the Britisher, is king of his own castle, and woe to 
the combatant who fights the battles of Freedom within 
that breezy but treacherous enclosure. Of such a kind 
is the indeterministic challenge of Professor James. The 
professor chooses his own position. It is the position to 
which his physiological researches and mechanical pro- 
clivities have led him. " Future human volitions," he 
tells us, " are as a matter of fact the only ambiguous 
things we are tempted to believe in " ; l consequently we 
shall be greatly helping to clear up the real issue of 
this free-will controversy as well as greatly simplifying 
the whole discussion if we agree, as we must, to restrict 
our attention to some specific volitional act. " Both 

1 James, Text-book of Psychology, p. 155. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 161 

sides admit that a volition has occurred. The inde- 
terminists say another volition might have occurred in 
its place : the determinists swear that nothing could 
possibly have occurred in its place." * Are you then a 
determinist or an indeterminist, for there is really no 
fence to sit on, and you must be one or the other ? 

Now we are prepared to urge that the triumph of 
the indeterminist is due solely to the willingness of his 
opponent to fight him on his own issue. Dr. Stout, for 
instance, seems to have fallen into this trap when in dis- 
cussing the forming of a decision, he says : " At this 
point the vexed question of free-will, as it is called, arises. 
According to the libertarians, the decision, at least in 
some cases, involves the intervention of a new factor, not 
present in the previous process of deliberation, and not 
traceable to the constitution of the individual as deter- 
mined by heredity or past experience. The opponents 
of the libertarians say that the decision is the natural 
outcome of conditions operating in the process of 
deliberation itself. There is, according to them, no new 
factor which abruptly emerges like a Jack-in-the-box in 
the moment of deciding." 2 So stated, we say, the issue 
is between Indeterminism and Soft Determinism, and we 
give our vote in favour of the Jack-in-the-box. 

Fortunately, however, for the interests of freedom the 
issue is, even on psychological ground, a much wider one 
than the above quotation would lead one to suppose. 
Prof. James tells us that the consciousness of an alternative 
being also possible, a consciousness which characterises 
effortless volition as surely as it does free effort is, in the 
case of effortless volition, a most undoubted delusion 
(cf. Text-Book of Psychology \ p. 4 5 6). We hold, on the 
contrary that it is as certainly not a delusion, and that 
freedom is the essence not only of self-conscious volitional 
activity but of consciousness itself, that it is a permanent 
attitude of the conscious subject, consciousness always 
implying a consciousness of the subject's relative in- 

1 James, Text-book of Psychology ', p. 155. 
2 Manual of Psychology, p. 589. 

M 



162 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

dependence in relation to the object that conditions but 
does not necessarily regulate its activity. 

§ii. We have now reached the crux of our whole 
inquiry. The ground here is full of pitfalls and we must 
proceed as warily as possible. Our aim is to find a basis 
for freedom within the restricted province of Psychology 
itself. In order to do so we shall find it necessary, as we 
hope to point out in detail in the second part of this 
Essay, to draw a distinction between two radically 
different conceptions of the purport and meaning of 
Psychology, only one of which is qualified to discuss or 
even to consider the question of freedom. Each 
Psychology starts with its own characteristic statement 
as to the nature of the experience it proposes to examine. 
Each makes an assumption with regard to the nature of 
that experience, an assumption which determines the 
whole further course of the inquiry, and each inquiry 
further is stamped as specifically scientific — as opposed to 
philosophical or metaphysical — by the fact that it makes 
this assumption. The assumption in the one case is 
deterministic, the individual's experience being here 
considered as something to be explained independently 
of the personality of the experient himself, to be explained 
briefly by the so-called laws of psychical causality. The 
assumption in the other case must be non-deterministic 
and allow us to treat the individual's experience as the 
experience of a free agent. It is the assumption of a 
more inward Psychology than the other. It seeks to 
define the relation of the experient to that which he 
experiences in such a way as to safeguard at one and the 
same time both the unity of that experience and the 
relative independence of the free agent with respect to 
the conditioning elements in that experience. The 
assumption then of the more inward Psychology is that 
the relation between the experiencing subject and the 
objects which condition its experience is that of a duality 
in unity — the unity consisting in the permanent indis- 
solubility of the relation, and the duality in that co-opera- 
tive opposition of the two factors within the unity of 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 163 

experience whereby a certain relative independence is 
secured to each. 

With the metaphysical validity of this assumption we 
are not concerned. Taken as an ultimate metaphysical 
point of view it may or may not lead us to monads and 
other haunts of subjective idealism. This is, indeed, 
matter for further discussion, but it lies outside the limits 
of a psychological inquiry. What we are especially 
concerned to point out is that once we accept the 
assumption as a valid statement of the relation of the 
factors within immediate experience we ipso facto accept 
certain facts as fundamental for the Psychology based on 
that assumption : for to accept an assumption respecting 
the nature of real experience is just to posit as real 
whatever facts that assumption involves. In the present 
instance the two essential facts involved are — (1°) the in- 
dissoluble tie connecting the subjective and objective 
factors in experience — a tie such that the former can 
can have no experience save through the latter ; and (2 ) 
the relative independence of both factors, the freedom of 
the agent and the conditioning quality of the objects. 

Accepting this assumption then as truly indicative of 
the fundamental character of all immediate experience, 
whether it be the experience of reflection — the so-called 
internal experience — or the experience of sense-perception 
— the so-called external experience, — we have freedom 
given us as a fact which can only be disputed by dis- 
puting the assumption. Freedom, then, as the fundamental 
fact of this more inward Psychology, is the relative 
independence of the subject which the duality of Subject 
and Object in the unity of Experience presupposes. 

Now this relative independence means real independ- 
ence, that kind of independence which has something of 
the nature of James's " original," " spiritual," " force," has 
its independence, in fact, without its indeterminism. 
What this independence means may be best gathered by 
considering its counterpart, the independence of the 
objective factor in the unity of Experience. This in- 
dependence of the object — an independence hardly 



1 64 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

sufficiently realised, perhaps, by Idealistic monism, though 
strongly emphasised by Dr. Stout — is shown in at least 
two ways : — 

i°. By the way in which it conditions subjective activity 
at every turn of experience, in the sense of limiting it in 
various ways ; 

2°. By the fact that the conquests of subjective activity 
are all so many discoveries of the nature and capabilities 
of that which conditions it, as well as of its own nature 
and capabilities. The results of such activity depend on 
the nature of the conditioning material which is being 
manipulated. The number of stones in a heap does not 
alter with the counting or the counters. 

But to discuss in any detail the relative independence 
of object or subject would lead us too far. Our concern 
is just to point out that the problem of Freedom can 
only be seen aright from this inner, central point of view, 
a point of view present not only in volitional decisions, 
but in every act of mind whatsoever. 

§ 12. We are now in a position to point out in 
conclusion, the precise relation in which we stand 
to Indeterminism. Indeterminism as represented by 
Professor James errs, in our opinion, in three main 
ways : — 

i°. It sets the problem of Freedom from its own 
restricted, abstract point of view. It starts with the 
deterministic endeavour to eliminate freedom as far as 
possible from all the processes of mind. At last it 
reaches a crux, a residual psychic phenomenon, the 
phenomenon of effort, when Freedom must either be 
pressed out of the universe altogether, and Morality and 
Religion, to say nothing of Knowledge, become mere 
phantasms of feeling and fancy, — or else paraded as the 
absolutely undetermined, the absolutely unconditioned. 
Meanwhile the fundamental inner relation of all immediate 
experience is ignored. The irpwrov -fyevhcxs of Indeter- 
minism is that it first sets the problem of Freedom on a 
dualistic basis, and so can see no tertium quid between 
the absolutely unconditioned and the absolutely predeter- 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 165 

mined. It can only offer us the choice between Fatalism 
and Chance. It can see no meaning in relative inde- 
pendence. 

2 . Closely connected with this prime defect we have 
the cognate defect of the Deus ex machina. This 
drawing on the radically discontinuous is a weakness 
inherent in and common to all systems that are too 
abstract for their purpose or subject-matter. "If we 
are to understand the world as a whole," says Dr. Ward, 
" we must take it as a whole." 1 So if we want to under- 
stand immediate experience as a whole we must take it 
as a whole from the start, and in so doing, bear the 
possibility of freedom with us from the beginning. This 
is a point of fundamental importance, but need not be 
insisted on any further in the present connection. 

3 . Closely connected again with this defect, is the 
fact that Indeterminism is mere Formalism. For it 
does not show us freedom as issuing out of the nature 
of anything, not even of the free subject himself, still 
less out of the fundamental character of immediate ex- 
perience, but as starting suddenly upon the scene like 
an apparition at the Egyptian Hall. 

And yet despite these three objections it may be 
urged against us in conclusion that the notion of relative 
independence, inasmuch as it connotes real independence, 
is shared alike by ourselves and the Indeterminists. 
This, it will be said, is the characteristic mark of Inde- 
terminism, and the objections brought forward, are not 
so much objections to Indeterminism itself, as to a 
certain species of Indeterminism from which we choose 
to differ. If this rejoinder be made, if it be thought that 
the objections do not constitute points of difference 
radical enough to suggest a difference truly generic, this 
further discussion must be relegated to metaphysics. 
Psychology — at least the Psychology we have in view — 
accepts a relative yet real independence as fundamentally 
present in the central fact of immediate experience. It 
is for metaphysics to analyse this independence and to 

1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 87. 



1 66 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

find out, if it can, how it can be or cannot be at one and 
the same time, both real and relative. That it cannot 
be indeterminate and is certainly relatively independent, 
and so free in the genuine sense of the word, remains 
meanwhile the working conviction of the Psychology of 
Immediate Experience. 

Part II. The Psychology of First Causes: A Fun- 
damental Distinction stated and applied 

§ i 3. Perhaps one of the most suggestive facts in connec- 
tion with the present state of Psychology, is the marked 
way in which it holds aloof from the problem of Freedom. 
" Psychology, like every other science," writes Hoffding, 
" must be deterministic, that is to say, it must start from 
the assumption that the causal law holds good even in 
the life of the will, just as this law is assumed to be valid 
for the remaining conscious life and for material nature, 
If there are limits to this assumption, they will coincide 
with the limits to Psychology." 1 James speaks in a 
precisely similar manner though with less right, seeing 
that the form in which he states his theory of free effort 
brings it inevitably within the scope of psychological 
enquiry. The theory, as is well known, concerns simply 
" duration and intensity " of mental effort. " The question 
of fact in the free-will controversy," he writes, " is extremely 
simple. It relates solely to the amount of effort of 
attention which we can at any time put forth. Are the 
duration and intensity of this effort fixed functions of the 
object, or are they not ? " 2 Still, despite this purely 
psychological turn which Professor James gives to the 
problem, he is quite decided that the question of free- 
will should be kept out of Psychology. " Psychology as a 
would-be ' science,' must, like every other science, postulate 
complete determinism in its facts, and abstract consequently 
from the effects of free-will even if such a force exists." 3 The 
free effort of Indeterminism is " an independent variable," 

1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 345. 
2 James, Text-Book of Psychology, p. 456. 3 Ibid. p. 238. 



hi THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 167 

and " wherever there are independent variables, 1 there 
science stops." 2 Hence, he adds, " So far as our volitions 
may be independent variables, a scientific Psychology- 
must ignore that fact, and treat of them only so far as 
they are fixed functions." 3 

Now the question before us is the following : — Is this 
deterministic assumption a necessary postulate of scientific 
inquiry ? Are we, as Psychologists, compelled to ignore 
the question of freedom ? If so, what conceivable relation 
can there be between Psychology and the problem of 
Freedom ? By way of answering this question, we propose 
to make a distinction between what we hold to be two 
radically different treatments of the Science of Psychology, 
each of which has its own separate problem and method 
of solving it. We propose to state this distinction as briefly 
and plainly as we can, to develop it, and lastly to apply it to 
the solution of certain fundamental confusions that still 
attach to the conception of Psychology as a Natural 
Science. 

1. Statement of the Distinction 

There is at present a fruitful, highly-developed, and 
rapidly self-differentiating Science usually known as 
Empirical Psychology. In its methods and aims it 
completely resembles the procedure of the physical 
Sciences. It shares the same postulate — that of a 
universal determinism — and hence also the same con- 
ception of what is to constitute a legitimate explanation. 
In so far as such method falls short of the ideal method 
of the physical model, such deficiency is due, not to any 
lack of faith in the efficacy of the method or the postulate, 

1 It would be a much truer use of language to say that Science cannot stand 
until it has acquired its independent variables, than to say that it must stop 
because it finds them. The calculus is built up upon the independent variable, 
as all considerations of velocity and acceleration presuppose time as the inde- 
pendent variable. Of course the independent variables of Mathematical Physics 
are only relatively independent, and indeed their independence is a mere mathe- 
matical fiction, but this difference in the two meanings of independent variable, 
the mathematical and the libertarian, helps to bring out the absoluteness of 
James's conception of free effort. 

2 James, Text-Book of Psychology, p. 455. 3 Ibid. p. 457. 



168 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

but to the intractability of the subject-matter. Thus Dr. 
Sigwart, after laying down the inductive method as the 
ideal method even in Psychology — in default of the 
deductive — adds the following words : — " A process quite 
parallel to the induction of Natural Science is, however, 
opposed partly by the impossibility of measuring psychical 
phenomena, partly by the variability of psychical subjects 
in consequence of their development, and partly by the 
great differences between individuals which are to some 
extent connected with this development. Except there- 
fore within the sphere of Psychophysics in the narrower 
sense, we cannot hope to establish exact general laws, by 
which the concrete temporal course of successive events 
in Consciousness would be determined on all sides in an 
unmistakable way." 1 

It is from the point of view of this purely Inductive 
Psychology that the deterministic assumption becomes a 
necessity of method. All Inductive Sciences presuppose 
determinism 2 for the very simple and general reason that 
they are concerned with the discovery of laws, i.e., of 
uniformities descriptive of the actions and interactions of 
the material considered. Hence from the point of view 
of Empirical Psychology, Hoffding is perfectly justified in 
stating that the limits of psychical determinism would 
mark the limits of Psychology. 

But, as we have already pointed out in the first Part of 
this Essay, this purely inductive treatment of Psychology 
is not the only conceivable form of treatment, nor is it, 
indeed, that form of treatment which the peculiar subject- 
matter of Psychology essentially demands. There is the 
inner, vital, truly causal point of view, a point of view not 
only individualistic but inward, which, accepting as its 
fundamental assumption the duality of subject and object 

1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 374. 

2 Throughout this inquiry we conceive the Inductive Method specifically as a 
Method founded on the Mechanical postulate, the postulate of universal de- 
terminism. This postulate represents the demand which science makes for 
Mechanical Explanations, the test or standard of legitimate explanation. It is 
surely not untrue to affirm that if a suggested explanation violates this postulate 
of mechanical connection, Science will have none of it. The essential limitation 
of this method and its Postulate, we take to be this, that it does not and cannot 
recognise explanation by final causes, in any genuine sense of the term. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 169 

within the unity of experience, accepts with it the freedom 
or relative independence of the subject as its fundamental 
fact. The distinction, then, that we propose to make 
is that between the now well-established Inductive 
Psychology, on the one hand, and this inward Science of 
Free Agency on the other, and the first distinctive feature 
of difference between these two Psychologies we take to 
be this, that whilst the Science of Free Agency accepts 
the capacity for real freedom as its fundamental fact, the 
Inductive Psychology unreservedly accepts the determin- 
istic assumption as its only possible working postulate. 
A second fundamental difference between the two treat- 
ments, a difference we cannot here do more than indicate, 
is to be found in the fact that whereas Inductive 
Psychology aims at discovering laws and combinations of 
laws, and at tracing uniformities within the psychical life, 
the newer — or the older — Psychology aims at showing 
how the free causal agency with which it is primarily 
concerned determines its own development. Were the 
term self-determination less ambiguous and difficult than 
it is, it might not be amiss to characterise this inward 
treatment of the psychical life as the Psychology of Self- 
Determination ; but as this well-worn expression is 
somewhat too pliant for purposes of distinction, the 
more startling though by no means desperate name of 
" the Psychology of first causes " would, we think, be 
found to hit the point more firmly and more truly. We 
must leave the title to defend itself in the pages that 
follow, noting simply in the meantime that any difficulties 
which the term " first causes " may awaken are not for 
Psychology to solve. It is not the business of Psycho- 
logy to make easy the task of Metaphysics. Its duty is 
to state its assumptions as to the nature of individual 
experience, accept as real the facts which that assumption 
necessitates, and then to push boldly forward with a 
sound conscience on its own lines. Let us now proceed 
to a more developed statement of what is assumed in a 
Psychology of first causes, and to a more definite treat- 
ment of its relation to Inductive Psychology. 



170 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

2. Development of the Distinction 

§ 14. I propose to start with the following definition. 
Psychology is the Science of Immediate Experience 
considered primarily from the point of view of the 
experient and only secondarily from the point of view 
of an external observer. This definition, it will be 
noticed, diners apparently from the customary definition 
of a Science in that it is so worded as to include not only 
the statement of the subject-matter of the science but also 
the point of view from which that subject-matter is to be 
regarded. The inclusion of point of view within a 
definition may seem unusual and require justification. It 
is unusual, no doubt, to define a Science in terms of its 
point of view but this is not because the statement of the 
point of view is unessential to the definition, but simply 
because it is always presupposed that the point of view is 
that of the external observer, of an observer, that is, whose 
method is conditioned by the decisive fact that he 
approaches his data from the outside. If Geology and 
Psychology had been the only two sciences ever studied 
we should have had to include within our definition of 
Geology the statement that the point of view taken 
throughout was exclusively that of the external observer. 

The objection, however, will probably be raised that as 
the definition of a Science includes as a rule only the 
statement of its subject-matter, the additional reference to 
a point of view is, to say the least, gratuitous unless it can 
be shown that the subject-matter will be differently 
treated according as the one point of view or the other is 
taken ; and the objection may be supported by the 
contention that whether the point of view taken be that 
of the experient or of the external observer, the mode of 
treatment will always remain the same, consisting, in 
short, in the method of Scientific Induction. Now this 
contention in so far as it insists on no element being 
admitted into the definition of a science which does not 
directly or indirectly serve to specify its subject-matter, 
must be accepted as valid, and it is only our conviction 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 171 

that the view-point in this case does affect the treatment 
of the subject-matter that has determined its inclusion. 
The statement, however, that scientific induction is the 
only conceivable method which can do justice to the facts 
of the mental life is the very statement we are bent on 
disputing. Scientific Induction is a method born of the 
needs of the physical sciences, a method which aims at 
unifying the phenomena of a science within an organised 
system of laws of an essentially hypothetical character ; 
it is in short a method that expresses not the necessary 
mode of activity of mind as such in the presence of a 
given subject-matter but its mode of procedure when 
treating this subject-matter from the point of view of the 
external observer whether in sense- perception or in 
introspection. For when we say that the point of view 
from which the experient considers his own immediate 
experience fundamentally determines the way in which 
that experience shall be treated, we have not mere 
Introspection, as such, in mind. Introspection, as the 
name implies, is no doubt a psychological point of view, a 
form of observation, and not, as it is often loosely called 
a " source " or a " method," but the method adopted in 
Introspection, may as assuredly be that of scientific 
induction as is the method adopted in Comparative 
Psychology. The point of view of the experient is in fact 
not to be identified with that of the inner spectator in 
Introspection, but is the point of view of one who, 
approaching his subject-matter from the inside, does not 
pass from disconnected data to uniformities that combine 
them, from the ceaseless flux of conscious states to the 
laws by which it is ordered, but from the very outset 
starts with the unities of mind, and from the vital 
interests and aims which express them. For the 
experient the real fundamentals are not fact and law but 
appetite and its satisfaction, or more specifically, to use 
Dr. Stout's own expression," the self-realisation of conscious 
purpose." In a word it is the essentially vital point of 
view. Let me give an illustration which I trust will not 
be pressed too far. The participators in an orchestral 



172 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

concert may be divided into three classes, those who are 
outside the walls of the concert hall and have at best only 
the sounds at their disposal to symbolise what is going on 
within the walls, the ticket-holders inside who not only hear 
the sounds but see how they are being produced, and 
finally the performers themselves who are not only aware 
of the sounds and the processes that give them, but 
inwardly realise the hidden unities of purpose and 
interests of which all else is but the means or the 
expression. Thus at any moment of the performance the 
outer spectator, we will say, experiences a sound, the 
inner spectator in addition the workings to which the 
sound is due, and the performer himself the inspiration of 
of the musical purpose and interest which is the source 
and fountain-head of all that is happening. 

No one can use the term " vital " nowadays without 
some word of apology or at least of explanation. Mine 
need only be brief. If life and mind are treated as 
coextensive, a hypothesis by no means disproved by the 
facts, and if life further is not treated as an impenetrable 
tertium quid between matter and mind, but merely as 
that which makes mental development possible and gives 
it its true inward quality, then the term " vital " fulfils a 
function which no other term can fulfil so well. That it 
should have no specific bearing on the explanations of the 
physiologist or biologist is due simply to the fact that it 
is purposely and profitably ignored by all investigators 
who do not need to consider mind as an influential factor, 
or to recognise any selective agency other than that of 
natural selection. But a science of immediate experience 
is in a different position, and psychologists who neglect 
the vital factor with all that it involves, are mere inner 
spectators, not experients, and can at best, like Wundt, 
reach the conception of mental development as that of a 
very complex system of reciprocal interactions between 
the parts of the process. 

The spectators' points of view, with their methods of 
scientific induction, are of course as essential for the full 
development of psychological science as is the more vital 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 173 

point of view, but they do not seize the subject at its 
heart. They miss the inner significance of mental 
development as a continuous acquisition of meanings and 
values, and they miss the true explanatory syntheses that 
dominate the development, finding them not in the 
fundamental factors or motives of that development but 
in laws of psychical or physical causality. Let us refer 
again to the case of Wundt. Wundt, like Fouillee, insists 
on the notion of Psychology as a science of immediate 
experience, as a science that starts, not from a number 
of generalised concepts, but from the actuality of the 
individual mind itself. But while insisting on the in- 
dependent nature of psychical processes, he has not 
shown how this independence of nature gives proof of its 
independence in determining mental development, but he 
has treated the development analytically after a rigorously 
inductive fashion. The main problem which mental 
development offers to the psychologist, according to 
Wundt, is the discovery of the laws, the psychical laws, 
whereby its uniformities and connections may be seized ; 
and these laws differ from the simpler laws of relation and 
combination that characterise psychical activity in com- 
plexity only, the interconnection with which they are 
concerned being of a more intricate and comprehensive 
kind. Thus instead of showing how development is deter- 
mined through its own vital syntheses Wundt lays stress 
on certain fundamental forms which such determination 
takes. It is the spectator's and not the vital point of view. 
It would indeed be a step in the direction of greater 
clearness were these so-called laws of mental development 
referred to not as " laws " but as " forms." The laws of 
" mental growth," " heterogeny of ends," and of " develop- 
ment towards opposites " as treated by Wundt, are they 
not rather descriptive forms affording a comprehensive 
bird's-eye view over the phenomena of mental develop- 
ment, than " causal laws of mental development " ? The 
reason given for calling them " causal " laws is that they 
are found by a process of induction precisely similar to 
that employed in discovering the causal laws of Nature. 



174 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON 



in 



"Just as the nature of physical causality," says Wundt, 
"can be revealed to us only in the fundamental laws of 
Nature, so the only way we have of accounting for the 
characteristics of psychical causality is to abstract certain 
fundamental laws of psychical phenomena from the 
totality of psychical processes." 

Now this reasoning is to my mind quite unsound. 
Granting that the nature of physical causality can be 
revealed to us only in the fundamental laws of Nature, 
we must find the reason for this in the fact that we are 
here dealing with that aspect of experience which shows 
us change and the occasions of change in abstraction 
from any inner activities that may be ultimately re- 
sponsible for the change. But in inward experience 
what we are most intimately aware of is precisely the 
causal activity we abstract from when we view the object 
from the outside. Here we are not compelled by the 
nature of the case to be content with the revelation of 
cause in the observable form of law, but are at liberty to 
study causes at first hand, and the processes whereby they 
conspire to determine their own effects. It is not true 
then that the only way we have of accounting for the 
characteristics of psychical causality is to do as Wundt 
bids us, — standing over our inner experiences, as it were, 
with a view to threading them together as best we may, 
and calling the result " laws of psychical causality." We 
are prepared, on the contrary, to maintain that such laws 
are not laws of psychical causality at all, any more than 
the laws of change and interchange of inert masses are 
laws of physical causality. All causes are first causes. 
Otherwise they are mere effects within an endless chain 
of events, and have no determinative power whatsoever : 
they transmit, but do not determine. Where, as in 
abstract Physics we are restricted to the continuous 
changes of an energy that has neither beginning nor end, 
transforming itself indefinitely within the two endless 
continua of Space and Time, there is no place for 
causality, but only for varying effects due to varying 
relations of position, speed, etc., between the moving 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 175 

masses. The world for Physics is one vast continuous 
effect taking the form of change, and its problem is to 
discover the laws not which regulate or determine, but 
according to which are regulated or determined, these 
never-ceasing changes. 

It seems then a very questionable plan to import a 
pis-aller method of scientific procedure from a sphere 
where it seems the only one available, into another where 
causal methods in the genuine sense of the word are at 
once suggested by the facts themselves. Psychology 
will of course always require those methods that seek 
for law in default of cause, as so much of the material 
it takes in hand presents just those features which have 
compelled the physicist in his own sphere to restrict his 
attention to laws of change. But this is no reason why 
experience in what is most vital and essential to it should 
not be treated according to its own nature, instead of 
having its inwardly experienced development brought 
under the same forms of inductive procedure as are 
adopted when discussing the development of a nebula, 
say, into a system of suns and worlds. In the latter 
case we can discuss the development only from the out- 
side, whereas in the case of self-experience, we have to 
get outside of ourselves before we can take up the 
spectator's point of view. 

What then is this truly causal procedure proper to 
the vital view-point, and to the vital view-point only ? 
If we are debarred from law are we not debarred from 
order as well, and even from intelligibility ? In answer 
to this we may say in the first place that if law is defined 
as the means whereby order and intelligibility are intro- 
duced within the flow of events, the choice can only lie 
between law and nescience. But a synthesis that de- 
termines some drift of mental development is not a mere 
law descriptive of the process it both induces and directs 
but is the cause of that process in the only true sense of 
the word, that namely of a cause in action, working out 
its own ends in conformity with its own nature. The 
nature of a causal agency is one thing, laws which 



176 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

describe the conditions under which that activity works 
quite another : the former may be best described as a 
synthetic principle that explains change, the latter as a 
description of some constant and general feature charac- 
teristic of this change. It would not be amiss, I think, 
were we to go a step farther than we went just now in 
advocating the distinction between " law " and " form," 
and suggest that the word principle be restricted to this 
strictly causal, synthetic point of view, so that all principles 
should be by definition principles of the nature and 
action of first causes and synthetic agencies. We should 
then be able to say of every principle, that it was not a 
law, or preferably, a form, and of every law that it was 
not a principle, but only the statement of some descriptive 
uniformity. We should talk then of the Form, or Law, 
or Theory, but not of the Principle, of Gravitation, we 
should talk of the principle of subjective selection, so far 
as by that we referred to a synthetic causal activity of 
Consciousness, but of the form, law, or theory of natural 
selection. 

§15. That Consciousness is essentially a synthesis has 
been since Kant's day a widely accepted doctrine of Psycho- 
logy, 1 but it plays even in the most modern text-books a 
formal rather than a causal role. The circumstances under 
which the problem arose, are no doubt largely responsible 
for this. It was set by Hume in such a way as to bring 
to the front the conception of the Unity of Consciousness 
as a combining form rather than as a causal agency. 
Either conception would have served to give that co- 
herency to the flow of Consciousness which the problem 
required for its solution. But the former was given 
and has prevailed ever since. Let us consider Hoffding's 
treatment of the Unity of Consciousness by way of 
illustration. " The peculiarity of the phenomena of 
Consciousness as contrasted with the subject-matter of 
the science of external nature," he says, " . . . is precisely 
that inner connection between the individual elements 
in virtue of which they apppear as belonging to one and 

1 Cf. , e.g. , Hoffding, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 47, 48, 49, 117, 138, 140. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 177 

the same subject." 1 This is, as Hoffding himself confesses, 
a purely formal conception, but it is not therefore barren. 
For it is not only the fundamental form, but also the 
fundamental condition " 2 or presupposition of conscious 
activity as we know it. Thus " it is only because one 
and the same self is active in all opposing elements that 
their mutual relation comes into Consciousness." l More- 
over this formal character of the Unity of Consciousness 
which distinguishes it from all material connections is 
sufficient to disprove as a Psychological absurdity any 
attempt to combine two egos or Consciousnesses into one 
ego. 4 Finally this formal unity is not only the general 
form and presupposition of all conscious activity but runs 
like a connecting thread through all the specific forms 
which that activity takes. " The nature of the ego is 
manifested in the combination of the sensations, ideas, and 
feelings, and in the forms and laws of the combination." 5 

This formal conception of the Unity of Consciousness 
has no doubt its conveniences. It is economical and 
easily understood. But it is an abstract, non-psycho- 
logical conception, and has proved quite as misleading 
as it has proved useful. Hoffding, indeed, realises that 
there is a real aspect of the Unity of Consciousness as 
well as a formal aspect. " The form of Consciousness," 
he says, " is common to all conscious beings ; individuality 
consists in the definite content which is embraced by the 
formal unity," 6 consists essentially, in fact, in a dominant 
vital feeling ; 7 but even as a feeling its function is 
simply that of keeping the concrete life of the individual 
together, a unifying, combining function. But it is at 
least not abstract, and that is a distinct gain to the 
psychological value of the conception. 

Quite recently a definite attempt has been made to 
emphasise the causal aspect of this synthetic activity of 
Consciousness. I allude to Dr. Stout's conception of 
conative unity or unity of interest. It supplies a triple 

1 Hoffding, Outlines of Psychology, p. 47. " Ibid. p. 136. 

3 Ibid. p. 140 ; cf. also p. 117. 

4 Ibid. p. 138. 5 Ibid. p. 136. 6 Ibid. p. 139, cf. also p. 49. 

7 So Wundt, cf. Outlines of Psychology, Eng. trans, p. 221. 

N 



178 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON in 

need. In the i° place it is a real vital unity, consisting 
not in a mere feeling but containing all the elements 
that enter into a complete attitude of Consciousness : 
appetition, feeling-tone, and attentive or cognitive aspect ; 
(2 ) it is a causal agency, not a mere combining activity ; 
(3 ) it is a workable conception of the synthetic unity 
of Consciousness. 

Now I do not propose to develop in any way these 
three notable contributions to the science of Psychology. 
There is, however, one remark I should wish to make. 
Readers of the " Manual " will, I think, discover that 
though there is no explicit recognition in those pages 
of the distinction we have been attempting to draw, that 
the distinction nevertheless exists, and is stated if not 
explicitly, yet in principle. For Dr. Stout maintains 
that the central interest of Psychology consists in the 
study of mental development as the self-realisation of 
conscious purpose in " the study of conscious endeavour, 
as a factor in its own fulfilment " 1 and shows how 
continuity of interest and of attention is the principle 
which, when articulately developed under the impetus 
given by objects, is the determinative explanatory 
principle in both reproduction and association. More- 
over, and this seems most important, Dr. Stout, following 
up Mr. Bradley's famous distinction in the opening pages 
of his Principles of Logic, has presented this mental 
development to us as consisting essentially in acquisition 
of meaning. The stages in mental development are 
represented as " stages in the evolution of meaning 
towards definiteness and explicitness." 2 Now there 
seems ground for maintaining that just in so far as 
mental development is presented in the light of an 
evolution of meanings and values, it is presented from 
the truly inward point of view and from the point of 
view which can alone furnish a living and a suitable 
psychological basis for Ethics, ^Esthetics, and the Theory 

1 This phrase is taken out of a course of lectures by Dr. Stout on the 
Fundamentals of Psychology. The italics are mine. 

2 Dr. Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 89. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 179 

of Knowledge in their inward aspects. The attempt 
made in this Essay towards establishing a certain 
fundamental distinction of psychological treatment, may 
accordingly be viewed as an addendum to the Manual, 
for it was suggested by reflecting on the necessary 
implications of the Theory of Conation as elaborated 
in that important work. 

We come now to our last point. We have stated 
and developed under such inspiration as we have already 
acknowledged what we believe to be a fundamental and 
important distinction. It remains for us to show that 
the distinction is not an arbitrary, manufactured product, 
but a fruitful and explanatory principle. " 

3. Application of the Distinction 

§16. Psychology, we are told, is a Natural Science. 
Let us examine this commonplace statement and see 
whether it is after all quite so satisfactory and free from 
ambiguity as at first sight it appears. 

It is generally asserted or understood, in the first 
place that, as a Natural Science, Psychology must be 
concerned both with describing and explaining the 
subject-matter of which it treats, but when we come to 
close quarters with this distinction between the descriptive 
and the explanatory functions of the science we meet 
with strange inconsequences that leave us with a mind 
all in confusion. Thus we find Prof. James starting with 
the conception of Psychology as a Natural Science with 
an explanatory function to fulfil, 1 and closing with the 
conviction that it is after all only a Natural History 2 
and cannot do more than describe the states of 
Consciousness it set out to explain ; whilst, on the other 
hand, Dr. Stout himself, after telling us blankly at the 
outset that Psychology " has only to do with the natural 
history of subjective processes as they occur in time," 3 
heroically proceeds to furnish us with the very explanatory 
agencies that are needed to bring true science into 

1 James, Text-book of Psychology, p. i. 9 Ibid. p. 468. 

3 Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 6. 



180 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

history and justify the claim of Psychology to pose as 
an explanatory science. 

Here then is a first ambiguity. In stating that 
Psychology is a Natural Science, do we mean that it is 
merely descriptive, or explanatory as well, — a mere 
Natural History or a genuine Science ? 

A second ambiguity the issues of which are closely 
involved with those of the first arises from the fact that 
to many minds " science " and " mechanical science " are 
synonymous terms. In calling Psychology a Natural 
Science these mechanists hold in reserve the latent con- 
viction that it is a Science only so far as Cerebral 
Physiology is able to afford it firm mechanical support. 
To such the notion of a teleological science is a contra- 
dictio in adjecto if it denotes a return to what they 
conceive to be the superstition of final causes ; but is 
otherwise harmless and even useful in so far as it serves 
merely to describe a feature of psychical phenomena that 
can be explained, or rather explained away, by natural 
selection. Thus Prof. James is able to preface his con- 
viction that Psychology is now " on the materialistic 
tack" 1 and must be allowed full headway in its 
mechanically directed course, with an approval of another 
" gradually growing conviction " of modern thought, 
that " mental life is primarily teleological." 2 

Here then is a second ambiguity. In stating that 
Psychology is a Natural Science, do we mean that it is 
a mechanical science, a teleological science, or both ? 

Now in addition to these two positive sources of 
ambiguity due to our uncertainty as to what we do mean 
when we talk of Psychology as a Natural Science, we 
are met by others equally confusing so soon as we 
attempt to decide what we do ?iot mean when we make 
that same assertion. Of these the two most important 
are those associated — (i°), with the distinction between 
"natural" and "normative"; (2 ) with the distinction 
between " natural " and " metaphysical." Let us briefly 
consider in turn each of these familiar distinctions. In 

1 James, Text-book of Psychology, p. 3. 2 Ibid. p. 4. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 181 

the first place we must draw attention to the fact that 
either distinction can be made as obvious as we please, 
and be so stated as to give us no more trouble, provided 
we are content to follow a line of treatment by which 
clear dualisms can always be extracted from the most 
entangled dualities. This consists briefly in abstracting 
the respective differentia of the two members of the 
antithesis for the purposes of distinction, and abstracting 
away all else so as to leave a clear space intervening for 
the exclusive use of the mind in its to-and-fro passages 
in between. Thus, to take the first antithesis, all chance 
of mutual interference between the opposing terms is 
removed by stating that natural science deals with the 
" mere is," and normative discipline with the " should 
be " or the " ought," provided the further stipulation is 
made that the " is " is a mere question of events or 
occurrences, obeying fixed laws of their own in com- 
plete indifference to the ends towards which they 
may be diverted by a regulative discipline. Thus the 
machinery of association is paraded as a mere " is " 
which thinking can freely regulate in conformity with 
ideals of which the machinery gives no hint. A difficulty 
arises, however, when we seek to render intelligible this 
relation between the " is " and the " ought " in conformity 
with the principles of Continuity. 1 The attempt is then 
made as a rule to show that the ideal is immanent in the 
actual, and only needs a little elaboration to fulfil a true 
regulative office ; unfortunately the processes whereby 
the actual assimilates and digests the ideal are not 
usually well-considered, so that the device comes to 
nothing more than the trick of conveying the ideal into 
the actual, and then withdrawing it when needed, with 
all the deftness and complacency of a prestidigitist. 
Indeed it must be so unless the " is " is otherwise 
understood than as a serious of " occurrences " or mere 
" events in time." Hence this distinction on closer view 
reveals ambiguities and uncertainties of a fundamental 

1 Cf. the blank amazement of Professor Liebmann in that most delightful 
chapter " Gehirn und Geist " of his book Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit. 



1 82 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON in 

kind. The same must be said of the relation between 
the natural and the metaphysical. Whilst it is true that 
no science whose assumptions are abstract in this sense, 
that they are not assumptions as to the nature of Reality, 
can resent as an interference the metaphysician's 
criticism of this assumption in the light of his more 
ultimate conceptions, it is quite otherwise when, as in the 
case of the more inward treatment of Psychology, the 
initial assumptions that are made are assumptions as to 
the nature of Reality — from the point of view, at any- 
rate, of individual experience. The question must then 
be asked : "Is a Psychology that makes assumptions, or 
postulates as to the nature of Reality, to be regarded as 
a natural or as a metaphysical science?" and together 
with it this further question : " Is Metaphysics then a 
Science without assumptions, and if not, how are we to 
distinguish between a Psychology that makes assumptions 
as to the nature of Reality and a Metaphysics that does 
precisely the same thing ? " 

These existing ambiguities now stated, we proceed to 
show to what extent they can be unravelled by the help 
of the distinction between the Inductive Psychology and 
the Psychology of first causes. We have four questions 
to ask and answer: — 

i°. Can Psychology justly lay claim to be an ex- 
planatory science or is its function merely 
descriptive ? 

2°. Is Psychology a mechanical or a teleological 
science ? 

3°. In what relation does Psychology stand to the 
normative sciences ? 

4°. In what relation does Psychology stand to Meta- 
physics ? 

i°. Is Psychology a Descriptive or an Explanatory 
Science ? 

§ 17. In answer to the first query we would unhesitat- 
ingly maintain that Inductive Psychology, in so far, at any 
rate as it is Psychology and not a schematised Physiology, 



m THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 183 

is a merely descriptive Science. From this point of view 
the effort of Inductive Psychology as represented by Prof. 
James and in a more systematic though less convincing 
manner by the school of Avenarius, to make cerebral laws 
responsible for the explanation of psychical effects, is 
readily intelligible ; for it is, so far as I can see, the only 
quasi-explanatory outlet for the exclusive devotee of 
Inductive Psychology. The line of reasoning which these 
cerebral explicants take is put very clearly by Mr. Petzoldt 
in his recently published Introduction to the Philosophy 
of Pure Experience. It consists essentially in the 
following argument : — The only intelligible principle 
of explanation is that founded on the thoroughgoing 
unideterminism of events. Such unideterminism is not 
anywhere traceable within the mental sphere. Mental 
processes must therefore either remain permanently 
inexplicable or be explained through their connections 
with material processes, for these alone proceed uni- 
determinately. As all known facts agree in showing that 
the only material processes in immediate relation with 
psychical processes are the processes of the brain, it 
follows irresistibly that if there is to be a science of mind 
at all, psychical processes must be conceived of as the 
dependent concomitants of brain-processes and receive 
their unideterminateness through their connection with 
these. And the conclusion runs : " If this is not so, then 
mental science is a mere descriptive phantasmagoria, in 
plainer words an illusion." 

Here we have the clear statement of the pass to which 
we are reduced when we insist on the psychical life being 
regulated like the object-matter of the physicist on the 
lines of a strictly mechanical unideterminateness. We 
are obliged to make the reality of immediate experience 
dependent for its intelligibility on physiological sequences 
of a more or less manufactured and fictitious kind, for as 
Lewes himself puts it — and the remark is abundantly 
verified in the character of the Avenarian method — 
much that passes as a physiological explanation of mental 
facts is simply the translation of those facts in terms of a 



1 84 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON in 

physiology that is merely hypothetical. 1 Still if a 
hypothetical physiological scheme is the only form that 
psychical explanation can ultimately take, it must be 
welcomed as supplying at least provisionally a much-felt 
want, and we who accept it must reconcile ourselves as 
best we may to the absurdities, the dualisms, and the 
scepticisms which are its inseparable concomitants. 

I cannot see, however, that we are under any necessity 
to trace out our explanations of psychical processes by 
the aid of the ideal scalpel of the Avenarians. Human 
intelligence having got the idea of causality from the 
action of the relatively independent agencies in immediate 
experience, introduces it into its study of external pheno- 
mena under the name of Force. It abandons this 
concept, however, as superfluous so soon as it is able to 
replace it by the more systematic conception of Law, 
of unidetermining law. This twice - refined product of 
shadowy thought is then reintroduced, a ghost of a ghost, 
into its original home. It has no longer anything 
psychical about it, but is a breathless, mechanical, and 
purely fictitious creature ; yet its plain duty, we are told, 
is to oust from the mental life all causal agencies that are 
not of its own rarefied kind, and to exercise full sway over 
the soulless dregs or "states" of consciousness that persist 
even after all original causal agency has been withdrawn. 
One can hardly help thinking that this unidetermining 
fiction from the ideal realm of abstract physics resents 
even the presence of these submissive fragments of 
mentality, and would fain have a free field in which to 
recreate consciousness afresh after its own heart. Perhaps 
the post-Avenarians will bring us to this ere long. 

These remarks are of course not aimed at the inductive 
treatment of psychical processes and states, which is as 
essential and important as it is limitedly descriptive, but 

1 Quoted by Alfred Fouill6e, Psychologie des I dies- Forces, i. p. 252 ; cf. 
also James, Text-Book of Psychology, p. 278: — " Truly the day is distant when 
physiologists shall actually trace from cell-group to cell-group the irradia- 
tions which we have hypothetically invoked. Probably it will never arrive. 
The schematism we have used is, moreover, taken immediately from the 
analysis of objects into their elementary parts, and only extended by analog}' to 
the brain." 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 185 

only at such pseudo- Psychology as goes to its own 
physiological fictions for causal explanations in the spirit 
of the savage who seeks his counsel from the idols of his 
own making. Such flimsy usurpation of the true ex- 
planatory function of free spiritual agency has surely been 
tolerated all too long, seeing how wholly gratuitous it 
undoubtedly is. For in actual concrete experience, we 
are presented at first hand with a living causal agency, 
continuously effective in mental development, to ignore 
whose effective presence is to ignore the whole inwardness 
and power of the psychical life, to treat it as something 
husk and hollow and as cleanly devitalised as abstractive 
power can make it. 

Inductive Psychology with its deterministic assumption 
necessarily ignores this vital factor as the regulating agent 
in mental development. In doing so it excludes the 
natural causal factor and is logically doomed to a purely 
descriptive function. Inductive Psychology we repeat, is 
necessarily and exclusively descriptive. The so-called 
causal connections between stimulus and sensation, can 
be causal only so far as causal agency is recognised in 
the material world as a real inherent factor, and the idea 
of " force " as no longer a mere subjectively valid concept. 
But such a recognition of the rights of force in the 
material world implies a recognition of the relative 
independence of the objective factor in immediate experi- 
ence, and this again implies a recognition of the relative 
independence of the subject within the unity of that 
experience, a recognition, that is, of a certain free, causal 
agency as an effective factor in mental development. 
The original free-will and force, its correlate, depend 
together. Once free psychic agency is ignored by the 
necessities of a deterministic science, the correlate force 
has no longer any right of presence but must sink to the 
rank of a mere convenient figment of the physicist's 
speech to give way eventually, first to energy and then to 
the pure law of a pure unideterminism. 

It is only then in its truly inward aspect that 
Psychology is a genuine explanatory science. For it 



1 86 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

deals there with free agency as the central, essential factor 
in its own development, following the causal principle as 
it were into all its effects and watching how out of such 
effective work eventually grow the great ideal structures 
of the Self and the World as systems of meaning and 
value. Psychology, then, we may say in conclusion, is 
descriptive or explanatory according as it is an inductive 
Psychology or a Psychology of first causes and free 
agencies, a Psychology studied from the outside or a 
Psychology studied from the inward point of view of the 
experient himself. 



2°. Is Psychology a Mechanical or a Teleological 
Science? 

§ 18. We have seen that as a purely inductive science 
Psychology abstracts unreservedly from the relative 
independence of the subject in immediate experience. 
With the abstraction of this relative independence goes 
all possibility of teleological explanation in Psychology 
together with any and every other kind of explanation. 
All that remains is the possibility of describing after the 
mechanical pattern processes of a teleological kind. And 
this is what inductive Psychology actually does in dealing 
with mental development. But a science, as we would 
say, is mechanical or teleological according as its method 
is mechanical or teleological, hence Inductive Psychology 
is essentially a mechanical science, inasmuch as its whole 
method of procedure is modelled on that of the 
mechanical sciences. It may take cognizance of the 
adjustments of inward to outer relations, of adaptations of 
means to ends, and the like, but its sole aim therein is to 
bring these adjustments and adaptations within some 
descriptive scheme of laws. In short, it seems impossible 
to admit as teleological a science that treats teleological 
data on the mechanical model, the model, that is, of a 
descriptive treatment whose goal is the discovery of law 
and uniformity everywhere and in everything. It would 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 187 

be just as reasonable to talk of Physiology as a 
teleological science. 

As a science of first causes, however, the Psychology of 
Immediate Concrete Experience is essentially teleological. 
For its aim is to show how causes whose freedom can find 
effect only in the selection of ends and the choice of 
means to realise them, contrive to realise their ends in 
virtue of a persistence of interest that continues active 
despite all temporary interruption, until the ends are 
reached. It is thus not only a science of first causes but of 
final causes, and its method is that which is natural to such 
a science, that, namely, of making the fundamental 
principles of finality centrally responsible for the work of 
explanation. We should accordingly be prepared to 
maintain that as a science of first causes Psychology is 
primarily and essentially teleological in its method, but 
that as an inductive inquiry, its method is mechanical and 
descriptive, and indeed so much so that the attempt to 
take on explanatory functions inevitably leads, as the 
history of the subject has shown, to the introduction into 
Psychology of a purely mechanical scheme of explanation, 
such as that of the physiological vital series of Avenarius. 

3°. In what Relation does Psychology stand to the 
Normative Sciences? 

§19. The Psychology of the will to think correctly, or 
of the will to act rightly, or of the will to feel deeply 
the inspiration of beauty is in each of these three 
directions of volition the science of a dominating funda- 
mental interest. Thus as Dr. Sigwart reminds us in the 
Introduction to his Logic, the function of Logic as a 
normative discipline is to regulate that region of our 
voluntary thinking, and that region only, which is 
governed by the desire to think the truth. A 
psychological analysis of the will to think correctly 
implies, then, an analysis of a certain specific unity of 
interest, interest in the true form or structure of 
knowledge. Hence that Psychology which takes as its 



1 88 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

fundamental problem the question as to how the mental 
life is built up by the progressive differentiations and 
interjunctions of such unities of conative effort, how, in a 
word, unity of meaning is developed through unity and 
continuity of interest in an object appears to me to stand 
in a peculiarly intimate relation to these standard 
disciplines, and that type of analysis which takes the form 
of showing how unity of purpose is the central factor in 
its own development, treating such unity of purpose as 
the persistence of a free agent in its own self-directed ends 
is the form of analysis naturally suited to bear the super- 
structure of a normative discipline. 

Inductive Psychology, on the other hand, appears to 
supply loose material rather than a psychological basis 
for normative science. It deals with the " is " of the 
psychical life as a succession of events or occurrences and 
seeks the uniformity of law amid the flux of mental 
change. It thus seizes the mental life, not as a " self- 
realising " process, to use a hazardous but expressive term, 
but rather as a product of the reign of law, to be 
analysed out into laws and their combinations. Failing 
to seize the inner meaning of self-development, it fails ipso 
facto in adapting its analysis to the inner requirements 
of a regulative elaboration. Whereas the more inward 
Psychology, through an analysis which ultimately takes 
the form of a synthetic development of final causes, is 
throughout concerned with a striving after what is better, 
with an " is-ought " so to speak, Inductive Psychology is 
only incidentally concerned with such a striving, and even 
when busied with it, investigates its laws of development 
from the same external point of view which Physics 
adopts in investigating the facts of external nature. A 
gap is thus left between the psychological analysis on the 
one hand, and the elaborative treatment on the other, 
which gives to the normative superstructure the look of 
something shaped out of alien material, rather than of a 
growth out of what is naturally akin to it. 

It therefore seems to me that the continuity between 
Psychology and the regulative disciplines can be truly 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 189 

secured only when Psychology is considered from the 
point of view of the experient, as the Psychology of the 
first and final cause. 



4°. In what Relation does Psychology stand to 
Metaphysics ? 

§ 20. Inductive Psychology stands to Metaphysics in 
precisely the same relation as the physical sciences. 
Physical Science abstracts at the start from all considera- 
tions that are indifferent to it, and makes just such 
assumptions with regard to its subject-matter as it requires 
for its own best development. These postponed considera- 
tions and conventional assumptions are then taken up by 
the metaphysician, and furnish food for his reflection. 
In such relation there seems no room for ambiguity. 
Inductive Psychology has its abstract, limited point of 
view, e.g., its deterministic assumption, and is therefore 
amenable to metaphysical control in precisely the same 
sense as in the science of mechanics. But the Psychology 
of first causes is not so simply related to Metaphysics. 
For it has this in common with Metaphysical inquiry 
that both it and Metaphysics are equally interested in 
the fundamental assumption as to the nature of Experience 
upon which assumption its whole superstructure is based. 
The two sciences seem to meet in the Theory of Know- 
ledge, or to use a truer and more inclusive expression, in 
the Theory of Experience. Is this more inward 
Psychology, then, to be classed as an offspring of 
Metaphysical Inquiry, or as more closely related to the 
Natural Science of Inductive Psychology ? 

In our opinion it is still a scientific Psychology and 
not a Metaphysics. For (i°), though concerned with its 
own assumptions it is not concerned with the assumptions 
of any other Science, whereas Metaphysics is concerned 
with assumptions in general ; (2 ) its aim is to explain 
causally, so far as it is able, and from the inside, what 
Inductive Psychology explains, so to speak, descriptively 
and from the outside. Its subject-matter is therefore the 



igo W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

data of psychical experience and in so far as it has such 
specific data, is more akin to a Science than to a Meta- 
physics. Moveover (3 ), it does start with an assumption 
as to the nature of Reality suited to its own peculiar 
problem, and the mere fact of this assumption being made 
seems to constitute a barrier-fact between the Science of 
first causes and Metaphysics, even though the function of 
Metaphysics be conceived as purely critical, and not as 
consisting in the reconstruction of Reality on a basis free 
from all assumptions. 

Assuming then that we are entitled to regard the 
Psychology of first causes as a Science and not as a 
Metaphysic, it remains for us to point out that the 
distinction between the two Psychologies, the inductive 
and — as we may here suitably call it — the synthetic 1 
Psychology, affords a basis for a corresponding distinction 
in the relation of Metaphysics to Psychology. The 
essence of the inductive method is that it starts with a 
medley of disconnected facts or data, and aims at dis- 
covering hypotheses wherewith to connect and explain 
the facts. These hypotheses are relatively to the facts 
they seek to explain fluctuating and unstable. Inductive 
procedure in a word starts with that which is to be 
explained and aims at explanations which are always 
hypothetical and liable to be superseded by others. That 
which gives unity and explanatory coherency to inductive 
science is just this hypothetical, fluctuating element. 
Synthetic procedure, on the other hand, starts not with the 
something that has to be explained, but with the ex- 
planatory factors themselves, and its endeavour is to 
justify the explanatory function of these factors. Hence, 
whereas the unifying explanatory element in inductive 
procedure is hypothetical, it is accepted in synthetic 
procedure as the fundamental fact or factor. This 
distinction made, Metaphysics, it seems, may, according 
as its procedure is inductive or synthetic, become the 
abstract science of ultimate hypotheses, or the concrete 
science of the First Synthesis, Cause, or Universal 

1 Synthetic in the teleological, not in the abstract logical, sense of the term. 



in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 191 

Agency, the science of the Absolute in the sense of the 
Whole. This science of a Synthetic Metaphysic would 
stand to Psychology in some such relation as the Science 
of the First Cause to the Science of first causes. But 
the result is not here the important point ; rather the 
nature of the relation. From which end, we ask, are we 
to start in our endeavour to pass from Synthetic Psychology 
to Synthetic Metaphysics ; from the Absolute or from 
the Individual's Experience ? It seems to me that we 
must start from the latter. A Science of synthesis may 
find its culminating triumph in an all-inclusive and 
explanatory Theism but it must surely grow out of much 
humbler considerations. Immediate individual experience 
is the one true vital synthesis whence all such synthetic 
effort must assuredly start, for it is that which is ever- 
present with us as the fountain-head of all our knowledge. 
To be fruitful and progressive all synthetic Science whose 
aim is to reconstruct the Real according to its own nature, 
without abstracting from any essential feature of Reality 
as it is known to us, must be rooted in the immediate ex- 
perience of the individual first cause, and grow out thence 
in some specific way. And if such growth should 
eventually bring with it not only the larger vision of 
Reality, but a simultaneous growth out of the individual- 
istic starting-point altogether, — is this not both natural 
and logically inevitable ? The roots of a tree grow and 
ramify pari passu with the branches, and the mustard-tree 
of the Kingdom of Knowledge is assuredly no exception 
to this universal law of Expansion. The one essential 
safeguard of concrete synthetic science we take to be this, 
that it should from the very outset cleave to Reality, 
grasp, that is, at something which shares the nature, 
though it share not the fulness, of the Absolute. If the 
limitedness of its point of view compels it to grapple 
itself to Reality by the help of some assumption, the 
assumption merely interprets the nature and scope of its 
contact with Reality, and does not signify an abstract 
remove of one or more degrees from such living contact 
with the Real. Once at grasp with Reality, the logic of 



192 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m 

growth will surely justify it in bringing wider and yet 
wider reaches of the Real within its compass, in passing 
from one relative whole of Experience to another and yet 
another, each more comprehensive and organic than the 
one preceding it, until some fruitful vision of the whole 
be reached. In some such way as this, perhaps, might 
the Psychology of first causes prepare the way for the 
Philosophy of the First Cause. 



IV 

THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 

By G. E. Underhill 

I. The Problem 

i. The relation of Philosophy to the Sciences. 

2. Within what limits does the process of Evolution hold good ? 

3. The meaning of Evolution. 

II. Presuppositions of Evolution 

4. a, Becoming. 

5. b, One and Many. 

6. c, Things. 

7. d, Time and Space ; e, Force. 

III. Gaps in Nature and in Knowledge 

8. Science, though it assumes the homogeneity of matter and that Natura 

7io7t facit saltwn, recognises the gaps between the inorganic and the 
organic, and between life and mind. 

IV. Evolution in the Inorganic Sphere 

9. Science regards even the chemical elements as evolved from homogeneous 

matter according to eternal laws of motion. 

10. Science (a) never deals with origins, (6) aims to express differences of 

quality in terms of quantity. 

11. But differences of quality, though they have quantitative aspects, are not 

mere differences of quantity : they are no less real and no more 
phenomenal than differences of quantity. 

12. The aspects of things, with which mechanical science deals, are products 

of mental creation and are measured by standards which again are 
products of mental creation. 

13. Thus mechanical science limits its Evolution to the changes of position 

and shape of homogeneous particles of matter according to eternal laws 
of motion. 

14. Natural Selection may be regarded as due to Chance, if by Chance is 

meant a cause or causes unknown to human calculation. But ' blind ' 
Chance is not a possible object of science. 

O 



194 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

V. Evolution in the Organic Sphere 

15. Life is a factor in organisms, which presents problems distinct from their 

mechanical and chemical aspects. 

16. Life implies adaptation and with it the notion of Teleology. 

1 7. The Evolution of organisms can only be ' explained ' by describing the 

succession of consequent upon antecedent stages according to unchanging 
biological laws. 

18. Adaptation implies purpose ; though the metaphor is taken from human 

adaptation of means to ends, science is not concerned to decide whether 
such purpose is conscious or unconscious. 

19. But philosophy sees in such purpose only one more instance of rational 

agency in things, parallel to those laws of matter, motion and force, 
which are capable of expression in rational terms. 

VI. Evolution in the Sphere of Consciousness 

20. The problem of Evolution is here generically the same as in biology : 

given consciousness and certain permanent laws of mental processes, 
successive stages in mental Evolution can be explained in the sense that 
they can be described more or less accurately as happening in 
accordance with such permanent laws. 

VII. Results of the Inquiry 

21. The Evolutionist (a) cannot deal with origins, (b) must assume permanent 

and unchanging laws of development, and (c) must discover relations 
intelligible to his own reason. 

22. The Darwinian Evolution is fundamentally the same as the Aristotelian 

conception of Final Cause. 

O fl(V 0"DV07TTtKbs SiaXeKTIKOS, O Se [AT] OV. 

I. The Problem 

§ 1. No one has maintained more strongly than Plato the 
close connection between philosophy and the special 
sciences, and nowadays Mr. Herbert Spencer, following 
boldly in his footsteps, has entitled his own work 
Synthetic Philosophy, implying thereby that his own 
aim is similarly to exhibit the relations of one science 
to another and the relations of the whole body of 
scientific truth to philosophy in general — to survey as 
from a high watch tower the totality of relations that 
constitute the universe. But in this age of specialisation 
no mind is large enough and no life is long enough to 
enable any single man to grasp even the principles of 
all the separate sciences — much less the immense body 
of truths that depend upon them. Even Mr. Spencer 
after many years of incessant labour has been obliged 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 195 

to omit two important volumes in his long series — the 
two volumes which were to deal with the inorganic 
kingdom and describe or explain the transition from 
inanimate matter to things endowed with life. In fact, 
the philosopher of the present day is at a distinct 
disadvantage when compared with his predecessor of 
even two or three generations ago. Descartes, Leibnitz, 
Kant were leaders of science as well as philosophers, 
and practically knew all that the science of their day 
could teach them. The modern philosopher, more often 
than not, has had no scientific training, and is dependent 
for his general notions of scientific truth on second-hand 
evidence or on authority. If by some chance or other he 
excels in one science, he cannot excel in all. He has 
too to contend against another difficulty, in some ways 
even harder to meet. While he is but too well aware 
of his own ignorance of the sciences, scientific men, 
eminent in their own special branches, are by no means 
so modest. They are apt to think, like the Athenian 
artisans, of whom Socrates complained of old, that 
because they know one thing well, they know all. And 
more especially are they apt to think that they can lay 
down the law with equal certainty in philosophical 
subjects. Now, though it may be true that all men 
who think at all, are bound to philosophise, it by no 
means follows that they are bound to philosophise well. 
Indeed philosophy, like science, needs its own special 
training, and, if the study of it can reveal to us no royal 
road to truth, yet it can warn us against many by-paths 
which in past times have led men into hopeless errors, 
and now stand as open as ever to allure the wanderer 
from the truth : and into some of these the scientific 
man, turned philosopher for the nonce, has shown himself 
peculiarly ready to stray. 

§ 2. The subject of the present essay is a modest one : 
it is to consider, some forty years after the appearance 
of Darwin's Origin of Species and of Spencer's First 
Principles, the limits within which the theory of Evolution 
seems to be applicable, and to consider them from a 



196 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

philosophical point of view. The writer is well aware 
of his own ignorance of the sciences, and can pretend 
to no very deep or encyclopaedic study of philosophy. 
Acute critics of every school have dealt, favourably or 
unfavourably, with the various exponents of evolutional 
doctrines — none more ably than Professor James Ward 
in his four l brilliant lectures on " the Theory of 
Evolution," wherein Mr. Spencer is the chief object of 
his onslaught. The present writer, however, wishes to 
deal, not so much with the truth or falsity of particular 
views about Evolution, as with the general limits within 
which the process of Evolution as such can ideally be 
supposed to apply. Does the acceptance of Evolution 
involve the iravra pel of Heraclitus as against the 
Eleatic permanence of being ? or is it rather a case of 
possible variations within constant fixed terms ? 

8 3. Darwin, it is well known, hardly ventured on any 
speculations outside the range of his own observations 
upon plant and animal life. Hence the strength of his 
position. Mr. Spencer would apparently extend the 
evolutional process to the whole universe, though it 
is by no means clear what he would wish to include 
in the universe. When he tells us that " there is an 
alternation of Evolution and Dissolution in the totality 
of things," we not unnaturally suppose that he means 
to include everything. Not so, however, for when he 
speaks of force, he tells us : " By the persistence of Force, 
we really mean the persistence of some Power which 
transcends our knowledge and conception. The mani- 
festations, as recurring either in ourselves or outside of 
us, do not persist ; but that which persists is the 
Unknown Cause of these manifestations." Again, he 
asserts the existence of " an Unconditioned Reality, 
without beginning or end." Perhaps indeed he would 
not include force or power or the laws of nature under 
the term things. Still as manifested to us, they are 
certainly " phenomena," and if all phenomena are but 
the manifestations of an "Unknown Cause" — be this 

1 Cf. Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. i. p. 185 ff. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 197 

Unknown Cause mind or matter — it is hard to see 
what differentia is left him, whereby to distinguish 
things as phenomena from force, gravitation, etc., as 
phenomena ; so that, if the process of Evolution is to 
apply to all phenomena universally, it ought to be as 
applicable to gravitation as it is to elephants. In fact 
in Mr. Spencer's hands the term " Evolution " has passed 
away entirely from its old and limited meaning of the l 
" gradual unfolding of a living germ from its embryonic 
beginning to its final and mature form," to the quite 
different meaning of the " process by which the mass 
and energy of the universe have passed from some 
assumed primeval state to that distribution which they 
have at present." Evolution in this sense is, in a word, 
the process of the World's Becoming. 2 And it is in 
this sense that many scientific men — let alone philo- 
sophers — use the term quite outside its old limitation 
to the development of vegetable and animal forms. 
Thus Sir Norman Lockyer, in an article 3 dealing with 
recent attempts to trace the origin of the chemical 
elements, habitually speaks of the Evolution of the 
elements from something homogeneous to their present 
heterogeneity. 

It is then in this wider sense of ' Becoming ' that 
the term ' Evolution ' will be used in this essay, and 
it is the writer's object to deal with the presuppositions 
which any philosophical account of the World's Becoming 
in general or any scientific account of any Becoming 
in particular must necessarily start. 

II. Presuppositions of Evolution 

§ 4. The most obvious of all the presuppositions is 
Becoming itself. It can only be taken as an ultimate 
fact given us in immediate perception — a fact which 

1 Ward, ibid. vol. i. p. 186. 

2 Evolution is often defined as the gradual process of adaptation between 
inner and outer relations, and doubtless it is so used in particular cases ; but 
obviously there can be no evolution of the "universe" in this sense: for there 
can be no outer relations, outside the universe. 

3 Nature, Ixi. p. 131 ff. 



198 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

Thought as such can never grasp or explain. For Be- 
coming is always continuous. Thought is successive. 
A bar of iron at the temperature a is raised by heating 
to the temperature /3. Though the process of heating 
is continuous, Thought can only represent it to itself as 
passing through a succession of stages x 1 , x 2 . . . x n , each 
one of which it can describe with greater or less accuracy. 
Still in Thought a similar interval can equally well be 
imagined to exist between x 1 and x 2 , so that, however 
exactly all these intermediate stages may be described, 
the continuous process as such always defies description. 
And necessarily so, for while Reality is concrete, Thought 
is in its nature abstract, and as abstract is so far inadequate 
to Things. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that 
all the failures in philosophical and scientific explanations 
are ultimately due to failure at some point or other to 
recognise this fundamental difference between Thought 
and Things. All explanation of whatsoever kind must 
ipso facto be abstract and as such inadequate, though its 
inadequacy is more often than not helped out by tacit 
assumptions and additions, which we are so accustomed 
to make that they escape our notice — assumptions and 
additions derived from the most familiar processes of 
immediate perception. To recur to the illustration of 
the heating of the iron bar ; we often say that we 
understand what is meant by its temperature being 
raised from a to ft, when really we do not understand it 
by Thought (for it is a continuous process), but only 
either perceive it actually by our senses or else imagine 
it. No explanation therefore can deal with a concrete 
thing as a whole ; it can only deal with its various 
aspects or states, so that the one and only way to avoid 
error is to be perfectly aware, what abstraction has 
actually been made, what other aspects have been 
deliberately left out — aspects which must just as de- 
liberately be added on before the explanation can pretend 
to any completeness. The Pythagorean attempt to 
explain Things by numbers is one of the most obvious 
of such mistakes. Nowadays it may indeed sound 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 199 

absurd to say that because all things are numerable, 
they must therefore be caused by numbers. But are 
modern philosophers quite sure that because they have 
outgrown this particular error, they are quite free from 
the taint of the same fallacy ? Is there not a similar 
error in thinking that because all things are material 
and in motion, therefore they must have not only their 
ultimate, but their complete explanation in terms of 
matter and motion, whatever other qualities they may 
possess in addition. 

But before proceeding further it will be well to remind 
ourselves what is meant by " explanation " in the scientific 
sense. A scientific explanation may give one of two 
things : either it may give an accurate quantitative 
formula, e.g. Newton's law of gravitation ; or in cases of 
causation the antecedent conditions. Both modes are 
highly abstract, and the latter suffers from an inherent 
defect : for " the true nature of the cause," as Professor 
Andrew Seth x puts it, " only becomes apparent in the 
effect." The antecedents in abstraction from their conse- 
quents are not real antecedents at all. Cause and effect 
in reality are inseparable. Taken by themselves the 
antecedents do not explain the consequent ; taken 
together with the fact of their combination and of their 
change they are identical with the consequent : for the 
continuous process involved in causation always eludes, as 
we saw, intellectual expression. 

§ 5. At the same time, however, that we have to admit 
this ultimate difference between abstract Thought and con- 
crete Things, the very possibility of science at all postulates 
the intelligibility of the universe. It is a postulate which 
the most elementary science has to take for granted, and 
which is confirmed by each new discovery. We cannot, 
or at any rate we need not, go so far as Hegel and say 
that the rational is the real and the real is the rational, 
but we cannot advance one step without assuming in some 
sense or other the rationality of Things. Whether we 
take it with Plato's Socrates as a gift of gods to men sent 

1 Man's Place in the Cosmos, p. 15. 



200 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

down by some Prometheus, or whether we call it with 
Mill the Uniformity of Nature, or with the late Duke of 
Argyll the Reign of Law, we must admit that all things 
are made up of the One and the Many and have 
determinateness and indeterminateness in themselves. 
This again is an ultimate fact of our experience and for 
it we can bring forward no reason or explanation. From 
the point of view of their oneness they become intelligible 
to us, and the task of all science is to discover this one- 
ness, but their multiplicity or manifoldness which staggers 
our intellect and is utterly beyond its grasp, is equally 
an ultimate fact of experience, and as such must be 
taken into account, if the system of our Thought is to be 
made in any degree adequate to the system of Things. 

S 6. But these two fundamental postulates of science, 
the first that Things become, the second that Things are 
both one and many, evidently involve a third postulate, 
quite as fundamental, if not more so — the postulate of 
Things. What right have we to talk about Things at all? 
It is again only our experience that gives us this right. 
For us Things are a product of this experience, and in 
our experience Things are only given in correlation with 
Thoughts. As Kant put it, our Understanding makes 
Nature, but does not create it. For purposes of science, 
however, we abstract Things from our Thoughts, and for 
this purpose Lotze's l definition of a Thing is as good as 
can be arrived at. " A Thing," he says, " is the realised 
individual law of its procedure." By this definition he 
implies that Things — at any rate as they are given us in 
perception — are both particular and changeable, change- 
able, however, only according to a law which connects 
the various changes, properties, or phenomena of the thing 
with each other ; and that this law realised here and now 
in a particular instance constitutes the Thing : for a law 
"has no reality except in the case of its application." In 
other words the individual thing of perception is both a 
universalised particular and a particularised universal : or 
as Mr. Bradley 2 puts it, "the individual is both a concrete 

1 Metaphysic, p. 68, Eng. trans. 2 Logic, p. 175. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 201 

particular and a concrete universal. ... So far as it is 
one against other individuals, it is particular. So far as it 
is the same throughout its diversity, it is universal." 

S 7. This essay, however, is not the place for a meta- 
physical discussion upon the ultimate nature of the real, 
or matter, or substance. Here it is necessary merely to 
point out the postulates of all scientific thinking without 
attempting to justify them. We must then in some sense 
take it for granted that Things exist, that Things change, 
that Things are one and many, that Things are intelligible. 
We must also postulate that Things are in time and 
space, and are acted upon by force. In fact these 
postulates are already involved in those already taken for 
granted. For nothing (if psychical things be excluded) 
can change except in time and in space, and except there 
be some force, external or internal, to make it change. 

III. Gaps in Nature and in Knowledge 

8. The ideal of most men of science from the early 
Atomists downwards has been to explain "the multiplicity 
of things by the help of changeable relations between un- 
changeable elements." Matter, it has been assumed, is 
homogeneous, and the difference of its apparent qualities is 
to be accounted for by the varying arrangements, or motions 
of its ultimate particles, for entia non sunt multiplicanda 
prceter necessitatem. If then we can once arrive at these 
unchangeable elements, the conception of Evolution must 
obviously be inapplicable to them. Men of science have 
also been haunted by another ideal, expressed in the old 
maxim Natura non facit saltum, or in its more modern 
form, the law of continuity. Guided by these ideals they 
have been extremely unwilling to admit the existence of 
any gaps in their science; and if in the existing imperfect 
state of knowledge, they have been obliged to admit the 
actual presence of such gaps, they have always hoped that 
the advance of knowledge would tend to fill them up 
entirely or reduce them to a minimum. At the present 
time the most serious gaps are the gap between the 



202 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

inorganic and organic worlds and the gap between life and 
mind. As a consequence the existing sciences fall into 
three corresponding groups — the sciences dealing with 
physical phenomena, like Physics and Chemistry, the 
sciences dealing with vital phenomena, like Animal and 
Vegetable Physiology, and the sciences dealing with 
mental phenomena, Psychology, Ethics, etc. 

We must therefore ask how far the conception of 
Evolution in its wider sense of " Becoming " is applicable 
in these three groups taken severally. 

IV. Evolution in the Inorganic Sphere 

§ 9. As already mentioned, Sir Norman Lockyer sees an 
exact parallel between the evolution of the inorganic, and 
that of the organic world. " In the problems of inorganic 
evolution," he says, 1 " which we have now to face, it is 
sufficiently obvious that we have to deal with a continu- 
ously increasing complexity of chemical forms, precisely 
as in organic evolution the biologist has tried to deal, and 
has dealt successfully, with a like increase of complexity 
of organic forms." 

Again he speaks of the material world being "built 
up of the same matter under the same laws," and he can 
see no break in the order of material evolution from end 
to end. The chemical elements, he believes, are not 
ultimate. He quotes with approval the words of Dr. 
Preston : 2 — " We are led to suspect that not only is the 
atom a complex composed of an association of different 
ions, but that the atoms of those substances which lie in 
the same chemical group are perhaps built up from the 
same kind of ions, or at least from ions which possess the 
same ejm, 3 and that the differences which exist in the 
materials thus constituted arise more from the manner 
of association of the ions in the atom than from differ- 
ences in the fundamental character of the ions which 
build up the atoms." 

1 Nature, lxi. p. 131. 
2 Ibid. p. 133. 3 e — electric charge ; w = mass. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 203 

§ 10. These attempts to express the differences of the 
chemical elements in terms of matter and motion may 
be taken as typical of all theories which attempt to 
reduce qualitative differences to quantitative differences, 
or to describe secondary qualities in terms of primary 
qualities. The first point to notice is, that the problem 
of ultimate origin or first cause is — and with reason — left 
untouched. Matter and motion are taken for granted : 
indeed for physical science there is no need to go behind 
them. Matter, further, is assumed to be homogeneous, 
and motion to manifest certain unchangeable laws, like 
Newton's laws of motion, etc. Evidently therefore there 
can be no evolution either of homogeneous matter as such, 
nor of the unchangeable laws of motion. Evolution for 
the man of science has no absolute beginning. His task is 
simply to describe the process as exactly as possible from 
the given state of matter and motion x to the state y 
which is ex hypothesi later in the order of time. Thus, if 
we take the Nebular Hypothesis of the evolution of our 
planetary system, we by no means get back to the 
beginning of things. Theoretically, it must be just as 
possible to give a scientific description — in other words, 
a determinate and exact description in terms of matter 
and motion — of the assumed nebulous state as to give 
a scientific description of the planetary system in its 
present state. The evidence may indeed be more difficult 
to collect and formulate, but it lies in pari materia. 
Secondly it is remarkable that such theories all more or 
less tacitly assume that the qualitative differences of the 
chemical elements and other supposed composite effects 
are fully explained by their quantitative differences, which, 
it is hoped, may ultimately be measured according to 
some unit or units of numerical relations. This surely is 
a large assumption and must not be allowed to pass 
unchallenged. Does it necessarily follow that — if x be 
taken as their unit of measurement — because one chemical 
element can be described as 2 or and another as 30*", all 
their differences are traceable to their numerical difference, 
1 or? To take an analogous instance: an organ, a 



204 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

piano, and a violin may all sound the same note, which 
may be numerically measured by its number of vibrations 
e.g. 50 per second, yet at the same time the timbre given 
to this same note by the three instruments is so different 
that it can be at once detected even by the most un- 
trained ear. These differences of timbre again can be 
numerically measured in terms of subordinate vibrations, 
and are recorded on the metallic discs of the phonograph 
quite as distinctly as the different notes themselves. That 
there is an essential connection between sounds and 
vibrations is sufficiently obvious. But that sounds are 
vibrations and that vibrations are sounds, is not so 
obvious ; for they may be, for all we know, joint effects 
of an unknown cause y. Sound we know as a perception 
of hearing : the minute vibrations we know as a conception 
abstracted from our perceptions of sight and touch. How 
are we to pass from the evidence of the one sense to the 
evidence of the other ? 

§11. To return to the chemical elements, there is 
similarly no evidence to show that the differences of the 
chemical elements from each other are exhausted by such 
differences as they possess, which are capable of being 
expressed in terms of matter and motion. To apply the 
analogy just adduced, is it not quite conceivable that two 
different chemical elements might be describable in 
identical numerical terms of matter and motion and yet 
possess such a different timbre, so to speak, that their real 
difference could not be denied ? Such hypotheses can 
only be taken to give any hope of an ultimate explanation 
of Things on the assumption — surely a very large one — 
that there is nothing real in the universe except matter, 
motion, and their laws of action and interaction. Similarly 
in the sphere of colour : blue may be described as light of 
wave length x and red as light of wave length y : the 
primary qualities, that is to say, manifested by these two 
colours, may be perfectly numerable or measurable. None 
the less, red is still red and blue is still blue. It is an 
attempt to account for a complex whole by its most 
measurable part or aspect, while all the time the relation 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 205 

between the part and the whole remains quite un- 
intelligible. It is like saying that, because this man is 
just and has two legs, the two legs are the cause of his 
justice. In a word these theories one and all imply or 
are apt to imply that the primary qualities alone are real, 
in Locke's words, " do really exist in the bodies them- 
selves," " are in the things themselves, whether they are 
perceived or no ; and upon their different modifications it 
is that the secondary qualities depend." Berkeley and 
Hume demonstrated the fallacy of this position long ago 
and no one has ventured since seriously to impugn their 
arguments. As Mr. Bradley has clearly put it, 1 " the line 
of reasoning, which showed that secondary qualities are 
not real, has equal force as applied to primary. The 
extended comes to us only by relation to an organ [of 
sense] ; and, whether the organ is touch or is sight or 
muscle-feeling — or whatever else it may be — makes no 
difference to the argument. For, in any case, the thing 
is perceived by us through an affection of our body, and 
never without that." And again, " without secondary 
quality extension [which is involved in all the so-called 
primary qualities] is not conceivable." It is needless here 
to reproduce the various arguments at length. Bacon 
complained of the old Scholastic Logic as being subtilitati 
naturce longe impar. Surely some of our scientists of to- 
day are victims of the same mistake : they accept as 
ultimate facts the immutability of matter, the conservation 
of energy, the transmutation of force, the development of 
the various sense organs from a primary sense of touch or 
a muscular sense, and taking any concrete thing, they 
strip off all its secondary qualities as in themselves of 
no importance, being only manifestations or modifications 
of its primary qualities ; then they take its primary 
qualities and describe them in terms of some assumed 
units of measurement. This done, they expect us to 
believe that even if they have not explained the nature of 
the real thing as it is in itself, yet they have given us the 
whole of its phenomenal nature, and that nothing more 

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 14. 



206 G. E. UNDERHILL rv 

need or can be known about it. It may of course very 
well be that the relation of the primary to the secondary 
qualities involves an insoluble problem : the important 
point is that it is a problem and must not be passed over 
in such phrases as — " all chemical atoms have a common 
basis, and build new mental images on this basis " l — 
phrases which imply that matter and motion alone are real, 
all other qualities being more or less mental illusions. 

So far then we have arrived at this result. Natural 
science for its purposes takes account only of the 
numerable or measurable qualities of things, and in dealing 
with secondary qualities, like colour, sound, and taste, 
regards them as results of their primary qualities, without, 
however, explaining their causal connection ; and is also 
very apt to speak of them, as Locke did, as " the certain 
bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the 
bodies themselves." 

§12. Two further points in the above analysis here 
call for notice : the first is the predominance of the mental 
factor in the primary qualities and their estimation or 
description in various units of measurement ; the second 
is the limitation which this abstract view of things imposes 
upon the problem of Evolution. 

To begin with the first point. Before any thing, e.g. 
the motion of a billiard ball, can be made the subject 
of scientific investigation at all, it must undergo a large 
amount of mental preparation. It cannot with any hope 
of success be treated in its concrete entirety. It must 
be taken as an instance of the operation of a universal 
law or laws. We must neglect as irrelevant to our 
purpose many of the particular circumstances that 
surround its motion, like, e.g. its colour, its material, the 
colour of the cloth on which it rolls, the time of day, 
the place, the person who rolls it, etc. etc. All these 
circumstances taken together make up the concrete 
individual phenomenon, but for our purpose we abstract 
them, until we have left one or more aspects of the 
phenomenon only, sufficiently simple for our science of 

1 Lockyer, Nature, lxi. p. 297. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 207 

mechanics to be able to cope with. In other words, 
having thus arrived at the mechanical aspect of the 
problem, the science is able to give a mechanical 
explanation of it : but the power to arrive at this 
aspect, is entirely due to the mind's power of abstraction. 
This is no mere reassertion of the epistemological truth 
that the unit of knowledge is subject plus object — the 
interrelation of the knowing mind and the object known 
— so that we can never arrive either at subjects per se 
or at objects per se. The point for emphasis is that the 
objects of all mechanical sciences are not the things of 
common experience as such at all, but only one particular 
aspect of them, namely, their primary qualities, and that 
this aspect, like all other particular aspects, is arrived at 
by mental abstraction. Equally true is it that the 
mechanical explanation or description of these primary 
qualities, when it is given, is just as much a mental 
product. Though it deals with matter and motion, it is 
expressed in terms of law, number, or measure. 

Historically, the conception of a Law of Nature is of 
course anthropomorphic. But natural science uses the 
term not in its juridical sense, but in the sense of a 
uniformity of sequences or coexistences. To arrive at 
such uniformities, however, we have to compare instances 
together, and to abstract from their individual character- 
istics the identical process in them to which, having thus 
abstracted it, we give the name of law. The law we 
arrive at is the result of this abstraction and without it 
is impossible. The applicability of such conceptions to 
the multiplicity of phenomena is one of the best evidences 
of the rationality of things. All Nature is akin, as Pindar 
sang, and there is as much Mind in Things as there is 
in ourselves. Similarly, when we use measures or 
numbers in our mechanical descriptions, not only are we 
obliged to take some arbitrary standard like a mile or a 
minute for our unit, but the very processes of numbering 
or of measuring are abstract mental creations. So true 
is it that even in the inorganic kingdom it is rather mind 
that explains matter than matter that explains mind. 



208 G. E. UNDERHILL IV 

§13. To come now to our second point, the limitation 
imposed by natural science on the problem of Evolution. 
" We now know," we are told, 1 " that heat, sound, light, 
chemical action, electricity, and magnetism are all modes 
of motion " ; 2 the different physical forces may be 
converted from one form into another : heat may be 
changed into molar movement or movement of mass ; 
this in turn into light or sound, and then into electricity, 
and so forth. Accurate measurement of the quantity of 
force which is used in this metamorphosis has shown that 
it is " constant " or " unchanged." That is to say, the 
Evolutionist has for his problem in the inorganic kingdom 
— from the mechanical point of view — to show, describe, 
enumerate, or measure the various motions whereby the 
different atoms, ions, or particles of homogeneous matter 
assume the configurations or arrangements that constitute 
in the first instance the various chemical elements ; then 
how these elements under these same unchangeable laws 
of motion get into a nebulous state ; again how under the 
same laws the nebulae pass into more shapely planetary or 
other systems ; and finally how in each planet or at any 
rate some of the planets, oceans, and continents, mountains 
and plains, lakes and rivers, are formed by the same 
agencies. Matter and motion, motion and matter — and 
their quantitative relations, are to mechanical science the 
real essences of all things. This, then, is the problem of 
Evolution for mechanical science : given as permanencies, 
homogeneous matter and certain unchangeable laws of 
motion, which ex hypothesi are liable to no evolution — to 
trace the motions whereby the ultimate particles assume 
different positions or configurations at different times 
and places. When the mechanical Evolutionist has 
solved this problem, he has achieved his task — a task in 
itself legitimate, noble and useful, but not exhaustive. 
For Nature to the mechanical Evolutionist is an abstrac- 
tion, a Nature of primary qualities, not Nature in 
her concrete reality. In reality Nature is not thus 

1 Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe, p. 235, Eng. trans. 
2 Ibid. p. 217. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 209 

separated from her secondary qualities nor from her 
relations to mind. Nature has indeed to be studied in 
parts and in aspects, because citius emergit Veritas ex 
errore quam ex confusione. But Nature herself is a whole, 
and the parts are only what they are by their relations to 
this whole. The parts, the aspects, the qualities, the 
relations which we have thus deliberately abstracted, must 
be scientifically described and restored to their proper 
places again, if our knowledge about Nature is ever to be 
at all adequate to Nature herself. " For we know in 
part : . . . but when that which is perfect is come, that 
which is in part shall be done away." 

§ 14. Before leaving this subject we may note that 
some scientists in treating of inorganic evolution use the 
Darwinian term " Natural Selection " to describe what they 
consider to be the most important of the causal agencies 
at work. A word must be said later on 1 as to the anthro- 
pomorphic metaphor involved in the term. Their meaning 
obviously is that among all possible alternatives the present 
state of the universe is due to blind chance. " Since 
impartial study of the evolution of the world," 2 as Haeckel 
puts it, " teaches us that there is no definite aim and no 
special purpose to be traced in it, there seems to be no 
alternative but to leave everything to blind chance. . . . 
Neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in 
that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a 
controlling purpose — all is the result of chance." This 
may indeed be admitted if " chance " be taken in its 
strictly scientific sense, as equivalent to " a cause or causes 
unknown to human calculation " ; and it is in this sense 
that Haeckel himself takes it, for he adds : " This, 
however, does not prevent us from recognising in each 
' chance ' event, as we do in the evolution of the entire 
cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law, 
the law of substance!' In other words, if there be taken 
for granted, as necessary presuppositions, particles of 
homogeneous matter and all the known laws of Nature, 
then we may say that the present state of the cosmos is 

1 Infr. § 19. 2 Haeckel, Kiddle of the Universe, p. 218, Eng. trans. 

P 



210 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

due to the action upon these particles of all the known 
laws of Nature plus chance, where " chance " means other 
uniform causes that are unknown. Surely this is a mere 
truism, which properly interpreted serves only to emphasise 
once more the supremacy of Mind. For all known laws of 
Nature are ipso facto intelligible and general formulae ; there- 
fore by analogy we have every reason to suspect that the 
unknown laws of Nature, could they be discovered, would 
also be intelligible formulae, and therefore in like manner 
sure evidence of intelligible and intelligent agency — in a 
word of Mind. If, however the emphasis be laid on the 
adjective " blind " and the cosmos be consequently taken 
as a purely " fortuitous concourse of atoms," not only is 
this utterly against all scientific evidence ; but the chances 
of there being any " cosmos " at all are mathematically nil 
— one against infinity. This amounts to the denial of 
any intelligible order or rationality in things, and without 
some such rationality science can have no object. In a 
word there can be no science. 

V. Evolution in the Organic Sphere 

§ 15. When we pass from inorganic to organic evolu- 
tion, we cross the unbridgeable gap recognised by all men 
of science. Thus Sir John Burdon-Sanderson, speaking in 
1893, 1 tells us: "The origin of life, the first transition 
from non-living to living, is a riddle, which lies outside 
our scope." In other words life must be taken as an 
ultimate fact of experience. But life is unknown to us 
apart from living organisms, and a living body may be 
defined in the words of Sir Michael Foster 2 as " a machine 
doing work in accordance with certain laws " : and " we 
may seek," he goes on to say, " to trace out the working 
of the inner wheels, how these raise up the lifeless dust 
into living matter, and let the living matter fall away 
again into dust, giving rise to movement and heat. Or 
we may look upon the individual life as a link in a long 
chain, joining something which went before to something 

1 British Association Address, 1893. 2 British Association Address, 1899. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 211 

about to come, a chain whose beginning lies hid in the 
farthest past, and may seek to know the ties which bind 
one life to another. Of the problems presented by the 
living body viewed as a machine, some may be spoken of 
as mechanical, others as physical, and yet others as 
chemical, while some are, apparently at least, none of 
these." Here again we see the powers and uses of 
mental abstraction : organisms are conceived as bundles 
of qualities, presenting various aspects. For scientific 
purposes these aspects can be detached from the whole 
and treated separately : thus organisms are, from one 
point of view, matter in motion, and as such present 
problems for mechanical and physical solution : from 
another point of view, animal heat, digestion, etc., involve 
chemical changes and are fit, subjects for chemistry ; for 
living bodies possess secondary as well as primary qualities. 
At this point many scientists have stopped under the 
notion, we are told, 1 that, " however complicated may be 
the conditions under which vital energies manifest them- 
selves, they can be split into processes which are identical 
in nature with those of the non-living world, and, as a 
corollary to this, that the analysing of a vital process into 
its physical and chemical constituents, so as to bring these 
constituents into measurable relation with physical or 
chemical standards, is the only mode of investigating them 
which can lead to satisfactory results. . . . The methods 
of investigation being physical or chemical, the organism 
itself naturally came to be considered as a complex of 
such processes, and nothing more. And in particular the 
idea of adaptation, which is not a consequence of organism, 
but its essence, was in great measure lost sight of." Here 
then we have a distinguished physiologist reiterating the 
old complaint of Bacon already quoted that the method 
used is subtilitati naturae longe impar — that ' adaptation,' 
the ultimate essence of organism is lost sight of. 

§ 16. What, however, does the professor mean by 
' adaptation ' ? " Action," he tells 2 us, " is of its essence. 
. . . The activities of an organism are naturally distin- 

1 Burdon-Sanderson, British Association Address, 1893. 2 Ibid. 



212 G. E. UNDERHILL .v 

guishable into two kinds, according as we consider the 
action of the whole organism in its relation to the externa! 
world or to other organisms, or the action of the parts or 
organs in their relation to each other. . . . Organised 
nature as it now presents itself to us has become what 
it is by a process of gradual perfecting or advancement, 
brought about by the elimination of those organisms 
which failed to obey the fundamental principle of adap- 
tation. Each step therefore in this evolution is a 
reaction to external influences, the motive of which is 
essentially the same as that by which from moment 
to moment the organism governs itself. And the whole 
process is a necessary outcome of the fact that those 
organisms are most prosperous which look best after their 
own welfare." From these passages two points clearly 
emerge : the first is that in the opinion of the professor 
the strictly biological attributes of organisms can never 
find their ultimate explanation in mechanical and chemical 
processes ; the second, that adaptation is the most essential 
characteristic of living organisms, and that this adaptation 
is the result of the interest of the individual which is " the 
sole motive by which every energy [or activity] is guided." 
In other words the teleological factor is, according to the 
professor, the most important, and the teleological aspect 
of organisms has little or nothing to do with their 
mechanical or chemical aspects. It is impossible without 
them, but is inexplicable by them. 

§17. Again, an organism is meaningless without its 
environment — without its relations to other organisms and 
to lifeless things. The problem of evolution is therefore to 
trace the process of adaptation between the organism and 
its environment. This problem is strictly biological — not 
physical or chemical — and cannot therefore be reduced to 
terms of number or measurement : any explanation 1 
therefore that can be given must take the form of a 
statement, as accurate as possible, of the antecedent 
conditions of the organism under investigation. But how 
is this to be done ? Logically the mode of procedure is 

1 Cf. sup. § 4. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 213 

precisely the same as in the inorganic sciences. All the 
postulates necessary in the latter have to be taken for 
granted and a few more, like that of life and adaptation, 
have to be added to them ; and in addition to the physical 
and mechanical laws of the inorganic sciences the biologist 
has to assume the working of certain biological laws, 
arrived at by mental abstraction from the observation of 
the actual processes in living organisms. Under these 
limitations the evolution of species is scientifically ex- 
plicable. In other words, though science can never tell 
us why nor even how one species changes into another 
species ; yet it can, or at any rate hopes to, describe 
accurately the antecedent conditions of any given stage 
in the process. Thus to explain a consequent species it 
must show that the antecedent species was transformed 
into it in accordance with the observed laws of Heredity, 
Variation, Natural Selection, etc. This is the way in 
which Darwin conceived the problem. " It is interest- 
ing," he writes at the end of his Origin of Species, " to 
reflect that these elaborately constructed forms [i.e. of 
plant and animal life], so different from each other, and 
dependent on each other in so complex a manner, 
have all been produced by laws acting around us. 
These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with 
Reproduction ; Inheritance which is almost implied by 
reproduction : Variability from the indirect and direct 
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse : 
a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for 
Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing 
Divergence of Character and the extinction of less- 
improved forms. . . . There is grandeur in this view of 
life, with its several powers, having been originally 
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one ; 
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according 
to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning 
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have 
been, and are being evolved." In other words, if we 
take for granted or as ultimate facts of experience the 
laws of Growth with Reproduction, of Inheritance, and 



2i 4 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

of Variability, resulting in Natural Selection, then it is 
possible to trace the evolution of species from the past 
stage x, through the stages abed ... to the present 
stage y. For science it is a process without beginning 
and without end ; we never get to the origin of species : 
we have to assume as ultimate principles Growth, 
Inheritance, and Variability, with their consequence 
Natural Selection — the most essential attributes of all 
organisms — and with these laws to help us, we can in 
some measure describe how " endless forms most beautiful 
and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." 
These laws are assumed to be permanent, and as such 
not liable to evolution, and yet at the same time they 
are attributes or processes in the organisms which exhibit 
them, and which are evolved according to them. Once 
more we find ourselves face to face with the old world 
problem — the reconciliation of the Permanent Unity of 
Parmenides with the Perpetual Flux of Heraclitus. 

§ 1 8. 'Adaptation,' however — the teleological factor — 
we have been told, is the essence of organism. The 
consideration of this dictum and its implications will 
lead us to a path which is, philosophically, much more 
hopeful. Does ' Adaptation,' we may ask, necessarily 
imply ' design ' or ' purpose,' whether conscious or 
unconscious ? Many, perhaps most, scientists, have 
abandoned the old meaning of conscious purpose — and 
for the very good reason that they can get on very well 
without it. For science, as such, cannot know agencies, 
but only the products of agencies : just as e.g. psychology 
cannot know faculties, but only the products of faculties. 
But it follows by no means that what we cannot know 
in the sense of forming an idea or image of it, cannot 
exist. In the strict sense of the term, we can know an 
animal in its earlier state a and in its later state b. But 
as Professor Burdon- Sanderson puts it, "to assert that 
the link between a and b is mechanical, for no better 
reason than that b always follows a, is an error of 
statement, which is apt to lead the incautious reader or 
hearer to imagine that the relation between a and b is 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 215 

understood, when in fact its nature may be wholly- 
unknown." Until Biology can give antecedents for 
Adaptation, Heredity, and Variability, it has to take 
them as ultimate facts or principles, and to work with 
them as such : it does not and need not concern itself 
with the further question of the Critical Philosophy — how 
are they possible ? This further question is the business 
of the philosopher, when he is dealing with ultimate 
biological problems, just as in Mechanics he has to 
discuss the presuppositions of matter, motion, and force ; 
and, if in this sphere he can frame his answer on the 
same lines as his answer to the ultimate mechanical 
problems, he approaches nearer to the Monistic ideal 
which is the goal of each science in its separate sphere 
as well as of philosophy as a whole. ' Adaptation ' then 
is the essence of organic life, and adaptation necessarily 
implies the adaptation of means to ends. But whence 
is this conception derived ? There can, of course, be 
only one answer : from our own conscious adaptation 
of means to ends in practical matters. So much every 
biologist will admit : but most will maintain that the 
use of the term in respect of organic growths is a mere 
metaphor, and that we cannot draw any inference from 
the suitability of the metaphor to the operation of any 
conscious purpose or design in organic structures. 
Scientifically they are perfectly right, because there is 
not and from the nature of things cannot be any 
evidence of consciousness, such as we know it in ourselves, 
as present in vegetables or in animals, whether low or 
high in the scale, outside the human animal : to science 
adaptation is a law — expressed ipso facto in rational 
terms — under which a great multiplicity of particular 
phenomena may be brought. What lies behind it, 
biology does not know, because there is no biological 
evidence. 

§19. But the philosopher, remembering how in the 
mechanical and chemical sciences the rational conceptions 
of law, number, and figure alone brought order into the 
chaos of the manifold, will see in biological adaptation no 



216 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

mere metaphor, but, reasoning by analogy, will see 
positive evidence of rational agency. Just as he saw the 
physicist and chemist compelled to interpret the relations 
of matter, motion, and force in terms of reason, and 
inferred that our minds were able thus to interpret 
inorganic Nature because somehow there was a like mind 
in her, so here again he sees the biologist unable to 
advance a step without the rational conception of 
' adaptation,' and in the same way argues that such 
interpretation can only be successful on the hypothesis 
that somehow there is in organic Nature a reason 
similar to our own, which adapts her means to her ends. 
"If man can by patience," writes Darwin, 1 "select 
variations useful to him, why, under changing and 
complex conditions of life, should not variations useful to 
Nature's living products often arise, and be preserved or 
selected ? What limit can be put to this power, acting 
during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole 
constitution, structure, and habits of each creature- 
favouring the good and rejecting the bad." Over and 
over again Darwin thus personifies Nature and he does so 
because he cannot help it — neither is there any reason 
why he ought to help it. For our own conscious mind is 
the only key we possess to unlock the secrets of Nature, 
and if this key will not fit, we have no other. In a word, 
the evolutionist in the organic kingdom, proceeds in 
precisely the same way as the evolutionist in the 
inorganic kingdom. Like him he starts with matter, 
motion, and force, and chemical change : in addition he 
assumes as ultimate facts or principles life and the laws of 
life, adaptation, reproduction, variation, etc. He makes 
no attempt to give any evolutional genesis of these first 
principles ; to him they are permanent causes : and then 
having assumed all this, he describes with as scientific 
accuracy as possible how the organism x changes into the 
organism y through the intermediate stages abed . . , 
And his description is successful and convincing, but only 
under these limitations. 

1 Origin of Species, new edition, 1900, p. 643. 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 217 

VI. Evolution in the Sphere of Consciousness 

§ 20. But little space is left for the consideration of 
the Mental and Moral Sciences, which come next in order ; 
but the limitations under which the evolutionist proceeds 
in this sphere are so very similar that so long an 
exposition is hardly necessary. In the Mental sciences it 
makes little difference from the point of view of this essay 
whether the evolutionist be a psycho-physicist or a pure 
psychologist. If he be the former, he will start with the 
principles of biology and attempt to give a history of the 
successive nerve -states and brain -states in the lower 
animals and in man which precede and which follow the 
facts of feeling and of consciousness. But just as life was 
an ultimate fact and insoluble problem to the biologist, so 
here feeling and consciousness are ultimate facts and 
insoluble problems to the psycho-physicist. " There is a 
gulf," says Dr. Stout, 1 " fixed between the physical and 
the psychical, of such a nature that it is impossible coinci- 
dently to observe an event of the one kind and an event 
of the other kind, so as to apprehend the relation between 
them. . . . No analysis can discover in the psychological 
fact any traces of its supposed physical factors." If on 
the other hand the evolutionist be a pure psychologist, he 
will start with consciousness as an ultimate fact, he will 
try to discover the general laws of mind and mental 
processes and then he will attempt to describe " in 
succession the various stages in the development of the 
individual mind, passing from the more simple and 
primitive to the more developed and complex." 2 
Logically the task before the mental evolutionist is the 
same as that before the biological evolutionist. He must 
start with the ultimate fact of conscious mind : he must 
discover the permanent laws of mental processes — of their 
variation, reproduction, and heredity, and then he will be 
able with some accuracy to describe the successive stages 
in mental evolution ; but here, just as much as in the 
changes of the inorganic sphere, and as in the vital process 

1 Analytic Psychology, vol. i. p. 4. 2 Ibid. p. 36. 



2i 8 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

of the organic sphere, the actual processes involved will 
ipso facto elude his understanding. Mental products and 
the laws and stages of their production — these constitute 
his science. The real process is beyond him — the process 
as it actually goes on in fact. 

VII. Results of the Inquiry 

§21. Our inquiry need not be further pressed : three 
points at least should now be plain. The first is that the 
evolutionist can never deal with origins. Wherever he 
begins his analysis — be it in the inorganic, organic, or 
mental sphere — he must start with some fact of experience 
and assume it as ultimate — at any rate for his particular 
purpose. The second is that all evolutionists alike 
assume the discovered laws of development to ■ be 
permanent and unchanging, and but few stop to ask, 
whence comes this permanence and absence of change ? it 
is a real question and raises a real difficulty. For from 
another point of view these laws are themselves qualities 
of the very things, whose evolution it is the object of 
science to trace. Gravity is just as much a quality as a 
law of masses ; reproductive power is just as much a 
quality as a law of animals ; association of ideas is just 
as much a quality as a law of mind. What then, we ask 
in vain, is the differentia whereby such permanent 
qualities are to be distinguished from qualities more 
fleeting. Why should there be supposed to be an 
evolution of chemical elements, but no evolution of 
gravity ? 

Thirdly and lastly in all scientific discoveries of what- 
soever kind the human mind discovers itself and its own 
intelligible relations ; the laws of motion, the law of 
gravitation, the orbits of the planets, the atomic weight of 
the chemical elements — so far as they are intelligible to 
us at all — are intelligible because the mind can number 
and measure and finds its own numbers and measures in 
them. The adaptation of organisms — that adaptation 
which constitutes their very essence — is intelligible because 



iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 219 

our mind knows what it means by adapting means to 
ends. Still more obvious is it that in the Mental Sciences 
our own mind is our only key to the facts and laws of 
other minds. Tavrbv vovs ical votjtov. 

§22. The doctrine of Evolution then is a doctrine 
of limited and not of universal application. It has been 
most successfully applied in the sphere from whence it 
came — the organic kingdom. In its wider sense — 
perhaps only distinguishable from mere change or be- 
coming by implying some increase in complexity of form 
— it is bearing good fruit as a working hypothesis in the 
inorganic kingdom. When applied to the development 
of conscious and social phenomena, it is very hard to 
distinguish Evolution from what our forefathers called 
history. But in whatever sphere it is applied, its limita- 
tions are equally apparent. It must have a matter of 
some sort in which to manifest itself and its manifestations 
are conceived, whether rightly or wrongly, to take place 
according to certain laws. And by all evolutionists 
alike, this matter, whether materially or ideally interpreted, 
and these laws are conceived of as permanent and 
unchanging — i.e. as not themselves subject to Evolution. 
In a word, the One and the Many, the Permanent and the 
Changeable, involve problems just as insoluble to us as 
they were to Parmenides and Plato, and we have not 
evolved (nor indeed are we likely to evolve) any new 
mental processes whereby to solve them. Human science 
conquers new kingdoms, but she conquers them with her 
old weapons — mental reconstruction of sensible experience 
according to mental principles. Darwin's discovery of 
the variability of species is no exception to the rule. 
The mental principle which he used is that which 
Aristotle formulated as final cause — nothing more or less : 
what he did was to prove that it held good in a sphere 
and in a way in which no one hitherto had thought of 
applying it. This old conception, thus newly applied, 
has indeed been disguised under the strange but now 
familiar names of Evolution, Adaptation, Natural Selection 
— probably for no other reason than Bacon's old con- 



220 G. E. UNDERHILL iv 

demnation of the misuse of final causes in physical 
sciences — causa finalis lantum abest ut prosit, ut etiam 
scientias corrumpat. In the minds of Bacon's opponents 
final cause was a notio male terminata. In Darwin's 
mind it became a notio bene terminata through his careful 
observations and experiments. Numberless passages in 
the Origin of Species might be cited ; thus referring 
to Natural Selection and his favourite canon Natura non 
facit saltum, he writes, 1 " [Hence] we can see why through- 
out nature the same general end is gained by an almost 
infinite diversity of means, for every peculiarity when 
once acquired is long inherited, and structures already 
modified in many ways have to be adapted for the same 
general purpose." Long ago Aristotle 2 on a slender 
basis of facts asserted eanv apa to evetca rov iv rols (frvcrei 
ytvo/j,€voi,<; kuI ovacv. Two thousand years later Darwin 
proved the assertion by marshalling the facts. 

1 P. 646. - Phys. ii. 8. 6. 



V 

ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 

By R. R. Marett 

I. Enunciation of Problem 

i. The vital problem of modern Ethics is how to reconcile the standpoints 
of Origin and Validity. 

2. Meaning of these terms defined and illustrated. 

3. The problem one of General Philosophy since (a) it pertains not only 

to Ethics but e.g. to Religion and Art ; (6) it involves the difficulty 
about the relation of the conscious to the non-conscious (instinct). 

II. Determination of Metaphysical Attitude 

4. What is to be our attitude towards our subject taken simply as matter 

of experience ? Metaphysics, the (would-be) theory of experience as a 
whole, must be experimental, if ' experience is experiment ' ; which 
doctrine of the psychologist, however, calls itself for metaphysical 
endorsement. 

5. In ' presentness of experience ' the psychologist provides the metaphysician 

with a standard of reality, whereby he may judge all discursive thinking 
to be experimental merely. 

6. And metaphysical thinking forms no exception to this rule, its special 

danger being that it exceed the limits of valid experimentation, there 
being a kind of barely logical conjecture which leads to nothing. 

7. Our policy will be to try to avoid this kind of thinking (' metalogic '), 

and to face the ' facts ' of Empirical Psychology. 

III. Delimitation of Sphere of Ethics 

8. Another preliminary task is to define the scope of Ethics — a subject 

on which the vaguest views prevail. A treble limitation must suffice 
us here. 

9. {a) Life is not all conscious life, and Ethics has no concern with instinct 

as such. 

10. (b) Conscious life is not all morality, and the aspect with which Ethics 

deals presents a certain ' reference ' and ' quality ' in combination, either 
of which so far as it is found apart from the other does not come within 
the range of Ethics proper. 

1 1. (c) Morality as a product is but partially due to moral theory, whether 

as science or as art, since, besides instinct and quasi -instinctive 

221 



222 R. R. MARETT v 

impulse, there is constitutional feeling to be reckoned with before bare 
idea can pass into achievement. 

IV. Ground-plan of Proposed Synthesis 

12. A first glance at the facts offers hope of reconciling Origin and Validity. 

Our appreciations of right and wrong manifestly involve some acquaint- 
ance with Origin in the sense of the history, or previous record, of the 
virtues. 

13. Such extreme views as (a) that the only Origin worth considering is 

' ultimate origin,' and (b) that Validity resides in ' things-as-they-are,' 
are due to metaphysical prejudice which will not stand criticism. 

14. Hence (a) proposed synthesis — an intuitionism tempered by historical 

criticism ; (b) proposed method — to confute the irreconcilables on either 
side. 

V. Mere Origin as an Ethical Standpoint 

15. The evolutionary school has no right to base its 'rational utilitarianism' 

on the fact of the ' unconscious utilitarianism ' of physiological nature. 
The latter represents a mere 'is,' whereas the moralist has to explain 
and justify an ' ought.' 

16. This is, however, not the transcendental 'ought' of the apriorist, but a 

psychological 'ought,' within which the empiricist has to recognise 
diverse moments that ' seem ' to imply determination from without and 
determination from within as occurring at once and together. 

17. Certain evolutionists indeed, by formally distinguishing between the 

psychological effects of ' natural ' and ' conscious ' selection, admit the 
bare fact of this duality in unity. It remains to follow up the idea into 
the concrete. 

18. For instance, let us consider the phenomena of man's history as a domestic 

being. 

19. These, though they agree in being psychical phenomena, display a 

duality of intrinsic character which, by a working hypothesis, we will 
ascribe to a divergence between the ' aims ' of natural and conscious 
selection. 

20. It may, however, be contended from the side of Origin that these specific 

facts on the whole testify to the predominance of the instinctive 
moment in the moral consciousness. 

21. But now consider the closely-related history of the idea of Purity. Here 

we seem to have a moral principle that has severed its connection with 
instinct and persists by reason of a validity of its own. To call it a 
'by-product,' with the evolutionist, is simply to confess it inexplicable 
from that point of view. 

22. In the absence, then, of any explanation from the side of Origin, the 

balance of empirical probability is in favour of the spontaneous 
origination of this ideal by the moral consciousness. 

23. A glance at the general history of the virtues (as classified in five 

' natural ' groups) confirms the view that the duality in question runs 
right through morality as a product. 

24. The domestic virtues appear on the whole to subserve the ' natural ' end of 

race-preservation. 

25. And this is also true of the national virtues. 

26. On the other hand, the personal virtues seem rather to make for a 

'spiritual ' end, namely self-perfection. 

27. As is even more palpably the case with the transcendental virtues. 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 223 

28. Whilst the international virtues show the two moments at work together. 

29. The appearances, then, are not unambiguous, much less do they un- 

ambiguously favour a metaphysical naturalism, the ethical implications 
of which can easily be proved to be a tissue of inconsistencies. 

30. On the other hand, suppose the votary of Origin eschew the naturalistic 

metaphysic, and concede a provisional validity to ' spiritual ' as distin- 
guished from ' natural ' motive on the ground that the one no less than 
the other is a persistent feature of historical morality, will he not 
proceed from history to introspection in search of a moral ' ought ' 
that is relatively unambiguous and one ? 

VI. Validity as an Ethical Standpoint 

31. Introspection, regarded as a branch of Empirical Psychology complemen- 

tary in scope to the historical or comparative branch, shows us that 
there is immanent in the consciousness of the typical moral subject of 
to-day a finally decisive power of selective valuation amongst moral 
principles. 

32. Further, introspection can to some extent explain why the moral will is 

ultimately governed by this kind of 'intuition,' namely, because (a) 
discursive thinking, as contrasted with feeling, to which intuition is 
more nearly akin, involves distraction of attention and consequent 
enervation of will ; (b) discursive thinking about futurities, as distin- 
guished from abstract immediacies, is enervating even as regards the 
will to think ; (c) discursive thinking about feelings is apt to do per- 
manent injury to the power of feeling, and hence to that of willing with 
confidence. 

33. Now the authoritativeness of moral intuition, to judge by its psycho- 

logical appearance, is not the mere 'fatality' of instinct. 

34. Nor is it the external compulsiveness of custom and law. 

35. On the contrary it is essentially internal, i.e. self-imposed ; and rational, 

i.e. capable of furnishing the supreme organising principle of a norma- \j 

tive Ethics that is at once preceptive and explanatory. 

36. As to the finality of such a form for Ethics from the point of view of 

General Philosophy and of Metaphysics, it would seem that normative- 
ness is common to the human sciences, and that there is at any rate 
much to be said in favour of a Ideological interpretation of the universe. 

VII. Suggestions for a Combined Use of the Two 
Standpoints in Empirical Ethics 

37. An ultimate authoritativeness in Ethics being, on the various grounds 

alleged, allowed to Validity, what scope can be found for Origin as a 
supplementary principle ? Now so far as Origin means naturalism, its 
services can be dispensed with altogether. 

38. But if Origin stand for the comparative study of the relations of the 

'objective,' i.e. external, factor to the 'subjective,' i.e. internal and 
self-authorising, factor in moral process, it has an important function 
to fulfil. 

39. Whilst Validity is from first to last the affirmative principle in Ethics, 

Origin is the critical. The ' laws ' that they conjointly establish are 
ultimately self-imposed ordinances, rather than observed uniformities, 
simply because of the ' fact ' that moral practicability, whether as 
sought or as studied, depends in the last resort on ourselves rather than 
on circumstances. 

40. Thus the form most fitting for Ethics as a whole would seem to be that 

of a critical intuitionism. Solvitur — aut dissolvitur — experiendo ! 



24 R. R- MARETT 



I. Enunciation of Problem 

§ i. A SYNTHESIS of the methodological principles of 
Ethics would prove very welcome to the philosopher. For, 
regarded philosophically, Ethics is in a bad way. Hostile 
camps divide the land. Now two courses are open to the 
peace-maker. He may break up the disputed territory into 
lots. Man's interest in himself as a moral being may con- 
ceivably have to content itself in the future with a chapter 
in psychology or anthropology here, a scrap-book of pensees 
there. Or the peace-maker may induce the contending 
parties to compose their differences. And this, we may 
be sure, when practicable, is the simpler and more grateful 
task. At all events, it is along these lines that one's 
natural prejudice bids one seek for a solution. 

Meanwhile it is all in favour of a settlement being shortly 
reached by the one way or by the other, that the matter 
and cause of the dispute are tolerably manifest. If Ethics 
splits into fragments, it will split on the question of Origin 
versus Validity. Or, on the other hand, if Ethics is to 
maintain its integrity as Ethics, Origin and Validity must 
be reconciled, that is, room must be found for both prin- 
ciples of explanation to operate freely within a single, 
well-marked, centrally-governed, self-supporting province 
of thought. 

§ 2. These principles are doubtless of such familiar import 
as scarcely to stand in need of preliminary definition. 
Origin, taken in an ethical connection, represents the 
standpoint from which moral judgments — that is, 
appreciations of the morally good and bad as applied 
witn regulative intent to human character and conduct — 
are explained by reference to the previous stages of a 
historical development imputed to them. Validity is the 
standpoint from which such judgments are explained by 
reference to their present worth and significance to the 
moral subject — to the person or persons uttering them. 

A few miscellaneous examples taken from various 
text-books, ethical and otherwise (the authors of which 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 225 

may go bail for the facts alleged), will serve to illustrate 
the general bearing and force of the antithesis : — 

We wear clothes to-day from a sense of decency. 
Originally they furnished our ancestors with a means of 
sexual attraction. 

For us monogamy rests on a theory of the rights of 
woman. Originally the form of marriage was the 
immediate outcome of the numerical proportions of the 
sexes within a given ' area of characterisation.' 

This man admires his own class for its intrinsic 
superiority to the vulgar in point of manners. The 
origin of his prejudice is to be sought in the racial scorn 
of a conquering people for its serfs. 

That man holds by fasting as conducive to moral 
self-discipline. In its origin fasting was a means of 
producing * ecstatic vision.' 

I play golf as a relaxation. Play originally constituted 
man's apprenticeship in the serious arts of life. 

We burn Guy Fawkes for fun. Once the act had 
political significance. In the background, perhaps, there 
lurks a rite designed to reinvigorate a corn-spirit. 

I think it morally abominable to commit homicide ; 
bad taste to speak evil of the dead ; disrespectful to 
approach my sovereign too closely ; dirty to allow 
another to eat off my unwashed plate. Once these 
practices were shunned from fear of ghosts or of 
magical infection. 

Now, presuming (as I do on the strength of its past 
and present tendency) that Ethics cannot afford to ignore 
either of these standpoints in favour of the other, is 
there any way, I ask myself, whether through subordi- 
nation or through co-ordination, of reducing them to a 
single standpoint — of freeing the ethical ' because ' of 
that fundamental ambiguity which threatens the very 
existence of Ethics as a working system of explanatory 
principles ? That, in outline, is the problem to be 
attacked. 

§ 3. By way of opening the campaign, let us take the 
auguries. The foregoing illustrations suggest two 

Q 



226 R. R. MARETT v 

observations which may serve to convey a hint of the 
kind of affair before us. 

(a) The first is that the difficulty about choosing 
between the standards of Origin and Validity is not con- 
fined to Ethics, regarded as one amongst several ' organised 
interests ' of the human spirit. Thus some of our cases 
seemed to relate primarily to the history of Religion ; 
others again to that of Art on its recreative side. Hence 
we must be prepared to have to cast about somewhat 
widely for a mediating view. Our object must be to 
provide a form for our theory of the moral life that will 
likewise be applicable to our theory of the ' higher life ' as 
a whole. 

(b) The second is that, of the various ' origins ' 
alleged, some are palpably more original than others. 
Sometimes, as when I forget Guy Fawkes the Popish 
plotter in Guy Fawkes the occasion of fireworks, one 
conscious motive has but retired in favour of another. 
Sometimes a motive will have altered mainly in respect to 
the degree of clearness with which the subject grasps it. 
Thus my prejudice against the serf-class — against ' colour,' 
let us say — may all along have rested on dimly rational 
grounds. Sometimes, however, a more radical form of 
change would appear to have occurred. The motive of 
shame that bids me cover my nakedness may be contrasted, 
not with another motive bidding me ingratiate myself 
with the other sex, which motive may or may not have a 
certain weight with me still, but with an instinct or 
organic trend, implanted in my body by natural selection 
in such a way as to bring about the result contemplated 
by the last-mentioned motive independently of any act of 
will on my part. Now this, the most original of so-called 
origins, will presumably constitute the real point d'appui 
of the more uncompromising champion of the historical 
method of explanation. His Origin par excellence will be 
' instinct.' Thus there looms ahead the problem of how 
to correlate the ' spiritual ' and subjective with the 
purely ' natural ' and external. It looks as if the 
combatants must be brought to parley ' from opposite 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 227 

sides of the ditch.' Here, then, is further reason to 
suppose that the argument is bound to transcend the 
strictly ethical plane ; that, in fact, however specific be 
the application it is intended to give to its conclusions, 
these cannot be established without the aid of — let us call 
it, General Philosophy. 

II. Determination of Metaphysical Attitude 1 

§ 4. General Philosophy, however, hardly amounts to 
Metaphysics. On the highest and most characteristic 
plane of Metaphysics we shall venture but for a moment. 
And that at once. For, if we are to be thorough, we 
must start by determining our general attitude towards 
our subject regarded simply as matter of experience. 

Metaphysics, as it is commonly defined, is the theory 
of experience as a whole. But this is what we would 
have it be rather than what it is. Actually, it comprises 
all thinking of which it is the guiding interest to bring 
our manifold ideal constructions of experience into the 
completest attainable accord, establishing such accord 
on grounds that shall seem sufficient, even if they do not 
exclude a logical possibility of doubt. 

For, if ' experience is experiment,' Metaphysics, at once 
because it helps to constitute, and because it contemplates, 
experience, must itself be experimental. 

But is experience experiment ? " Surely," the plain 
man will say, " it is not wholly or merely so. There is 
nothing in the ordinary sense experimental about a 
haunting sense of pain. Rather it would seem as if the 
statement were but intended as a simplification for 
descriptive purposes of our perplexed experiences. ' Is ' 
must here mean ' is pre-eminently, characteristically, and 
on the whole.' " 

1 Sections II. and III. , containing introductory matter which suffers from 
much compression, may be omitted by the reader who is impatient to embark on 
the main theme, so long as he is prepared to allow (a) that all philosophy must 
be empirical in the sense that it must relate to an experience capable of having 
such actuality as we have experience of ' personally ' ; (b ) that the scope of 
Ethics, the theory of moral good, is narrower than that of the theory of the good 
in life as a whole. 



228 R R. MARETT v 

Now the doctrine comes in the first instance from 
the psychologists. Certain of them find in it an adequate, 
or at any rate a convenient, basis for the particular 
' construction ' which, as psychologists, they deem true 
or least untrue. The construction in question is built 
up somewhat as follows. The conscious individual in 
his active capacity — for example, as when he thinks — is 
moved by interests. These sum themselves up in a 
master- interest, his desire to live well. This master- 
interest, however, defies all his efforts to yield it 
immediate full satisfaction. Thus it ever harks forward 
towards an indefinite future. Hence, since in conscious 
experience regarded from this point of view the sense 
of wanting perpetually both outflanks and outweighs the 
sense of having, experience is fundamentally a trying, 
and thinking in particular a thinking-onwards rather than 
a thinking-out or thinking-to. 

But is this point of view finally tenable ? Is it, not 
merely good, but good enough ? Can we, not merely 
as psychologists, but as reasoners in search of synthesis, 
fairly content ourselves with it? That is what the 
metaphysician — or, since one man may suffice for both 
characters, the psychologist turned metaphysician — has 
to decide as best he can. He has to decide, for instance, 
whether, in the foregoing description, the stress laid on 
conation and the conative moment in thinking, the 
comparative indifference shown to the passive or merely 
feeling side of our nature, the assumption that our diverse 
and often incompatible interests can be summated, the 
refusal to recognise the existence of states of complete 
content, the identification of the reaching-beyond-itself 
of consciousness with a reaching-forward in time — 
whether all these things hold good and must hold good, 
not merely for the purposes of psychology, but for the 
purposes of the most comprehensive thinking possible 
for us. 

I hope, then, after thus openly acknowledging the 
prerogative of Metaphysics as a final court of rational 
appeal, that I shall not be misunderstood if I proceed 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 229 

to declare that this psychological account of the essential 
nature of experience is likewise to me metaphysically 
satisfactory, in the sense that for the purposes of the 
most comprehensive thinking it seems as good as can 
be got. 

§ 5. The standard of psychological reality is presentness 
or actuality of experience. " But ' presentness,' " says 
the metaphysician, "does not — cannot — hit the mark. 

No ' what ' can be equivalent to ' that.' " " Its inexpres- 

sibleness, then, being, if you will, presumed, let us go on 
to express it as best we can." So answers the 
psychologist ; and it is his great merit that he has had 
the courage to set out on this task apparently foredoomed 
to failure. The metaphysician, on the other hand, is 
wont to tie himself up into such knots with his heaven- 
sent principle of contradiction, that he cannot get ' fairly 
started ' at all, much less find himself in a position to 
'report progress.' Yet this, paradoxical as it may sound, 
is just what the psychologist has done. Though lacking 
a visible ' take-off,' he has started, he has got on. 
Wherefore I am the more prepared to follow him. 

The psychologist has showered ' whats ' on the 
inexpressible ' that ' of actual experience, and has found 
to his delight that some of them have the power to stick. 
Ludicrously inadequate they doubtless are — if you start 
with expecting adequacy of our thought - symbols. 
Consider the so-called 'positive' attributes that the 
psychologist has ventured to ascribe to his ' reality.' 
Presentness, actuality, warmth, intimacy, all-inclusiveness, 
the me-now, a psychosis, and so on — do any of these 
anchors take firm bottom ? Or consider the so-called 
4 negative ' attributes — the ' infinite ' judgments which 
proclaim their subject not merely this or that. ' Not in 
time,' ' no quality, nor mode, nor subject, nor object, of 
experience,' ' not felt, nor thought, nor willed,' ' not past, 
nor future, nor the external world, nor you, nor God,' 
' not one, not many,' etc., etc. — how hollow and meagre, 
beside the fact, is all this indirectness ! " But the 
absurdity," you say, " of trying to make me understand 



230 R. R. MARETT v 

that of which by intuition I am perfectly aware already ! " 
Not at all. The psychologist, if he has somehow made 
you understand what he is driving at, has performed a 
great feat. He has compounded intuitions with you — 
or, let us say (to leave ' you ' somewhat arbitrarily out 
of account), with himself. He has projected the intuition 
of presentness into the world of thought as an intuition. 
He has found a universal standpoint in the fact about 
which he is more certain than about anything else. " As 
sure as I am alive and here " (what matter the words if 
they but be ' to that effect ' !) represents his ne plus ultra 
of conviction. 

Which standpoint, I maintain, is no needle-point. 
Though we be not angels, there is room upon it for us 
all — even for the metaphysician. The practical failure 
of his attempt to argue himself out of his sense of present 
existence ought to provide him with an inkling of where 
the counterfoil lies to the ' appearance ' he decries but 
finds it so hard to get away from. Appearance attaches 
to experience in so far as it is divided. I do not say 
' divided against itself.' Experience does not always 
make a 'poor show.' To be 'in' it or 'of it is enough 
to constitute show as such. It comes to this — that 'this 
presentness ' is more vital to the existence in experience 
of any of ' these presents ' than any of them are vital to 
its existence. To the extent to which the intuition of 
presentness does — I do not say ' must,' but ' does ' — ■ 
prevail over all discriminative analysis of the elements 
presented, to this extent is the ' absoluteness ' of the 
former exalted above the ' relativity ' of the latter. To 
put it thus to myself is formally of course an experiment. 
Yet, if ever experimentation reaches the limits, not of 
logical possibility, perhaps, but of a logically valid 
possibility, it must surely be at the point at which the 
experiment is instantly confronted by the verification — 
when presentness leaps up from the suggestion of 
presentness, and overtakes itself. 

§ 6. Psychological reality has been cited in order that 
it may bear witness. It has been cited because it seems 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 231 

to afford the most crucial proof that, in default of a 
perfect proof, is to be obtained of the experimental 
character of discursive thinking as such. Here is some- 
thing which I cannot argue myself out of, nor yet prove 
myself to have. Suppose I try to prove that presentness 
is. I must put the proposition to myself as meaning 
something — e.g. that, presentness removed, there would 
be nothing. But how can I possibly be present to verify 
the prediction ? The conditions necessary to the proof 
fall outside one another, not in any merely temporal 
sense, but really. Hypothesis and verification cannot 
conceivably come together in any actual experience such 
as we know in ourselves. Discursive thinking, then, it 
would seem, is confined to the sphere of the actually 
possible — nay to the sphere of representability, which, in 
what the psychologist cannot but regard as its hither aspect, 
is but the possibility of a possibility, a condition conditioned 
by something itself conditional, namely presentability. 

Thus the essence of all mere thinking — be it meta- 
physical, or be it of narrower scope — is to be conjectural, 
or, as I would prefer to say, experimental. For in a 
sense there are no definable limits to conjecture. There 
is an experimentation unworthy of the name that is 
merely logical. Left to itself mere thinking cannot draw 
the rein on its innate discursiveness. I can conjecture in 
a barely logical way about a presentness of non-existence. 
With a certain play and show of reasoning I can follow 
the notion up to the very verge of suicide — intellectual or 
actual. But, intuition being permitted to interfere, at 
least this kind of guess-work is pronounced futile, and in 
that pronouncement the utmost bounds of valid conjecture 
are set up. Conjecture is restricted to readabilities. 
In the conviction that they must be readabilities we 
are at the point where conjecture verges on certainty. 
On the other hand, what the readabilities may or may 
not do and be is purely problematic. Precarious inference 
following in the wake of a capricious memory has to decide 
as best it can. Framework and filling of our experience 
— the things that must be, can be, have been, will be, 



232 R. R. MARETT v 

ought to be — all alike are doomed to a relative subsistence 
which we can sufficiently know to be such by the per- 
petual contrast it affords to the ever-presentness that is. 

§ 7. The foregoing considerations will not have been out 
of place in such an essay as this if they in any way serve to 
point out to the ethical student in search of synthetic prin- 
ciples that the true field for his energies lies, not in the no- 
man's-land of dogmatic ' Metalogic,' 1 but in the workaday 
world of Empirical Psychology. It is an essential part of 
the experimentalist theory that in philosophic inquiry the 
preliminary attitude makes all the difference. It is not 
intended to oppose the free assumption of an intellectual 
attitude to a no less free submission to the teachings of 
fact. It were a bastard ' Pragmatism ' that proclaimed 
licence as the final authoriser of law. The true Pragmatism 
asserts no more than that in science nothing can be 
' done ' unless the prior resolve be there to face the facts 
fairly. It but reaffirms the old saying that ' none are so 
blind as those who will not see.' The point of the remark 
lies in its application to the case of the • metalogician.' 
When a man's presupposition is that he has no call to 
face the facts because forsooth they are ' mere facts ' ; and 
when further he maintains that this is no presupposition, 
because he is a metaphysician, and Metaphysics can ' do 
without presuppositions,' i.e., by beginning nowhere in 
particular can end up everywhere at once ; then it is time 
to retort on him with a reminder which, were it not so 
necessary, might sound a truism. 

Our concern, then, shall be, submitting ourselves to 
that attitude of ' scientific ' inquiry so foolishly maligned 
by some, to confront the never-ending task of correlating 
the relativities — the apparent readabilities — of human 
experience. As the data will be experimental, so must 
be the results ; the stream cannot rise above its source. 
From Empirical Psychology we shall gratefully accept the 
' personal ' or ' anthropocentric ' standpoint, which, even in 
order to discount its own bias, our thought, it would seem, 
is in nature bound to adopt. And, as regards Metaphysics, 

1 The word is framed on the analogy of ' metageometry,' ' metapolitical,' etc. 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 233 

though we have already had recourse to its aid so as the 
more circumspectly to choose our path, we had better 
resolve that for the rest its place shall be on the further 
side of the sciences. Though it may easily be less, it 
cannot, so we have judged, be more than a final critical 
survey of the organised facts of experience as if 'a concrete 
whole, with the object of guaranteeing us such intellectual 
impartiality and breadth of view as may be possible in 
our necessarily adventurous attitude towards life in 
general. Hence, since we cannot in what follows hope to 
defend our conclusions (save in so far as may by anti- 
cipation have been done) against criticisms applying to 
the general standpoint and broader principles of the 
psychology they rest on, we had best at once renounce 
all claim to metaphysical exhaustiveness, and be content to 
regard our experiment, in virtue of its wide yet inter- 
mediary scope, as simply an essay in General Philosophy. 

III. Delimitation of Sphere of Ethics 

§ 8. Having trenched on Metaphysics just in so far as 
seemed necessary in order to define our general attitude 
towards the problem in hand, let us now proceed to get 
within somewhat closer range of its specific matter. But 
we have not yet done with preliminaries. 

It will be remembered that the instances taken at 
random to illustrate the antithesis between Origin and 
Validity suggested of themselves two things. The first 
was that Ethics is one amongst several ' organised interests ' 
of the human spirit. The other was that altogether outside 
the sphere of the interests that move the will, yet at every 
point conterminous with it, lies the mysterious domain of 
instinct. It would, therefore, seem advisable for us to arm 
ourselves at the outset with some notion of the limits — I 
might even say 'the limitations' — of Ethics proper. 

There is a confused impression prevalent that, because 
all willed conduct has in some degree an ethical aspect, 
therefore Ethics is the theory of human practice in general. 
Nay, now that a clever, though unscrupulous, trick of 



234 R- R- MARETT v 

naming has enabled ' the unconscious ' to pretend to so 
many of the attributes of spirit, it is hard to say where, if 
anywhere, the line round Ethics would be drawn by some. 
On the other hand, seeing that divide et impera is the 
watchword of advancing science, it is hardly too much 
to say that the crying need of Ethics is for narrow limits, 
and the narrower the better. Indeed, if a competent 
psychologist, realising that there are almost numberless 
ways in which a man may bring himself to perform the 
act he believes to be socially salutary, were carefully to 
characterise the feeling or thought that exerts the decisive 
influence in each case, I believe that a score of varieties 
would spring into existence where but one form of moral 
prompting is recognised to-day. And I believe that, of 
these varieties, four-fifths might be eliminated as non-moral 
without prejudice to Ethics as a theory of somewhat 
comprehensive sweep. 

Meanwhile, in an essay of the present kind, only the 
broadest distinctions, and those most firmly founded on 
common consent, can be noticed. It will, in fact, suffice 
to place a treble limitation on the scope of Ethics. Let us, 
then,brieflyremind ourselves: (a) that life is not allconscious 
life ; (&) that conscious life is not all morality ; and (c) that 
morality as a product is but partially due to moral theory, 
whether organised as science or as art. 

§ 9. (a) From a narrowly practical point of view there 
may be little use in dwelling on the suspicion of agencies at 
work in some indefinite ' outside,' whence they are some- 
how able to control the phases of our spiritual life. 
Nevertheless, the suspicion is too well grounded on 
' appearance ' to be ignored at the scientific level of 
thought. The question of our ' ideal ' self-sufficiency and 
freedom, if not left to settle itself, must at least be raised 
in such a way as not to prejudice an open-minded 
recognition of the ' facts.' And, psychologically, the 
facts are these, that a sense of freedom coexists with a no 
less lively sense of constraint. Now, as, I hope, the sub- 
sequent argument will tend to show, it is of vital importance 
for man that he should allow himself to lean chiefly on 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 235 

his sense of freedom. Even on deterministic principles 
fatalism might reasonably be denounced as fatal policy. 
There may, then, be good psychological reason why at 
the moment of action, nay whenever it is action that 
is directly contemplated, a man should try to forget 
that his existence is hung somewhere between the 
opposite poles of blind instinct and autonomous rationality. 
When, however, it is simply a question of the ' facts,' to 
hail ourselves as the absolute masters of our fate is not 
even a ' noble ' lie. 

§ 10. (b) Next as regards the ratio borne by morality 
to conscious life as a whole. Even if we be ready to say, 
with Matthew Arnold, that morality constitutes " three- 
fourths of life," at least we are admitting it to be less than 
all. I would not deny that in the scheme of the 
' organised interests ' a place might be assigned to, and 
might even in some measure be occupied by, a supreme 
science and art of life — call we them severally Philosophy 
and Religion, or what we will. It can, however, but plunge 
us in methodological chaos to identify such architectonic 
and all-embracing theories of man's function in the 
universe with the science and art of Ethics. 

The determinate subject-matter of Ethics, as those who 
have actually worked at its problems would seem generally 
prepared to admit, is the conduct of life just in so far as 
it is subject to the influence of a particular kind of praise 
or blame. Whether administered by self or others, it is 
usually regarded as belonging to a single kind. And the 
characters by which this kind may be recognised are com- 
monly held to be two, namely a reference and a quality, 
which taken strictly together suffice to constitute it speci- 
fically unique. So far it is comparatively plain sailing. The 
difficulty begins when this reference and this quality have 
to be defined. Both prove singularly elusive notions. Hence 
the moralist as a rule is driven to indirect methods of de- 
scription. He tries to bring out the nature of the differen- 
tial characters of the moral judgment by contrasting them 
with those of certain allied kinds of judgment. But thus 
to transcend the limits of Ethics is not to widen them. 



236 R. R. MARETT v 

For example, let us suppose sociality to be the 
distinctive object of ethical reference, and purity or 
disinterestedness of motive to be the specific mark of 
ethical quality. How is the moralist to invest these 
terms with meaning? Sociality is vague enough. And 
as to purity or disinterestedness, how on earth is he to 
convey an impression of them to a mind that does not 
meet him half-way? Thus a strong temptation besets 
him to ' stand outside ' his subject. To his indistinct 
analysis of the moral judgment he can at least oppose 
some counter-analysis, say, of our appreciations of beauty 
and truth on the one hand, and of our prudential 
valuations — the calculations of ' enlightened selfishness ' — 
on the other. The former show purity without the social 
reference, the latter has the social reference but lacks 
purity. Morality consists in the combination of the two. 
" And now," says the moralist, " you have an inkling of 
what I am driving at." 

Subsidiary studies of this sort, however, but betoken a 
certain inevitable multiplication of interests, due to our 
natural tendency when seeking for side-lights to follow out 
each abstract resemblance overfar. They cannot be held 
to enlarge the sphere of Ethics proper. Doubtless such 
methodological restrictions are somewhat tiresome to 
observe. Tiresome or not, however, they are the prime 
conditions of scientific continence and sane activity. It 
is to save time and labour, and not for the simple pleasure 
of framing empty cadres, that science adopts the watch- 
word divide et impera. 

Nay, it is precisely because it has hesitated to impose 
any strict delimitative rule upon itself that ethical science 
is still so backward. Ethics till of late has been merged 
in General Philosophy to the prejudice of both. Its 
ultimate presuppositions have received almost exclusive 
attention. And the basis of fact, apart from which, as I 
believe and have tried to show, the attempt to set up 
presuppositions is the merest waste of time, has for the 
most part been supplied by prejudice, by imagination, 
and by the kind of uncritical history that embodies both 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 237 

these sources of error in their most insidious form. 
Ethical science, then, as one amongst many sciences 
(sundry of which, indeed, are likewise ' moral,' but only in 
the sense in which Mill spoke of the ' moral sciences '), 
must confine itself to its special task, if it is to throw 
light on what is but an aspect, though a highly important 
aspect, of the problem — what are the conditions of the 
best life possible for man. 

§ 1 1. (c) And now to complete our account of the limita- 
tions of moral philosophy. It is surely obvious that, in 
neither of its complementary forms, neither as science 
pronouncing indicatives nor as art issuing imperatives, is 
theory equivalent to practice, or moral theory to moral 
practice. That our one hope lies in trying to think 
rationally I do indeed believe. But a life that was all 
rationality — a rationality, so to speak, that 'did itself — 
were a condition of existence which even the ' metalogician ' 
finds it difficult to conceive, and which at any rate 
he would scarcely regard as possible ' for us.' 

I am not simply recurring to the ' fact ' of instinct — 
of forces that impinge on the moral nature ' from without.' 
There are other forces in the background of consciousness 
that, if not wholly blind, as the instincts, are at least 
purblind. Constantly we hear the voice of reason 
without being able to obey, and, like Goethe's Fisdier, 
' half sink and half are drawn ' from the living atmo- 
sphere of active consciousness into the dim choking 
depths of some half-physical passion. No doubt even 
at these depths there proceeds a conscious life of a kind. 
But the laws that govern it are such as to be hardly 
comparable with those that hold good at the higher level. 
Interest, purpose, selectiveness, will — these terms no 
longer apply save as psycho-physical metaphors. 

Nay, not to dwell exclusively on the obscurer phases 
of ' organic ' consciousness, let us consider for a moment 
the opposition between reason and feeling taken in their 
broadest sense. The subject is clearly one that will 
intimately concern us later, seeing that Origin and 
Validity are to one another something as a judgment 



238 R. R. MARETT v 

based on history to a judgment based on impulse. Let 
us note our own inevitable bias in approaching such a 
problem as the one before us. There is at least a half- 
truth at the back of the view that a man is born either 
a Platonist or an Aristotelian, a Stoic or an Epicurean, 
an intuitionist or a utilitarian, an idealist or a 
materialist. We are spiritually- minded or worldly- 
minded, believers or sceptics, romanticists or realists, 
and so forth, primarily at least in virtue of a certain 
fundamental endowment of massive sentiment. The 
ceaseless ideas glance to and fro ; but they have rarely 
force enough to affect the centre of temperamental gravity. 
On the side of thought advance by give and take is rela- 
tively easy. But constitutional prejudice, unlike thought, 
recognises absolute differences. Indeed, save in the 
case of the rarer spirits, reflection in regard to the 
broader issues of life has scarcely a chance of making 
itself felt save indirectly through the medium of what 
may without prejudice be described as the ' social con- 
sciousness.' The expert changes his mind for better 
or worse. His generation, or the next, half-consciously 
accepts the new faith. And last of all, perhaps, such 
wholly subconscious agencies as imitation and early train- 
ing succeed in the course of centuries in giving a fresh 
turn to the national or racial ' trend.' 

Morality, in short, implies the co-operation of disparate 
and even discrepant factors, standing as it does to moral 
philosophy as achievement to bare idea. Even though 
we suppose, with the logical optimist, that the conditions of 
such achievement are expressible in ideal form, and that they 
must be so expressed ere perfect achievement is possible, 
it is none the less a ' fact ' of our distracted workaday 
experience that it is one thing to yield full intellectual 
assent to some counsel of perfection, and quite another 
to succeed in living up thereto. 



ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 239 



IV. Ground-Plan of Proposed Synthesis 

§ 1 2. And now let us close with our task. We have to 
reconcile as best we can the standpoints of Origin and 
Validity regarded as presumably cognate principles of ethical 
explanation. Perhaps, then, after all a certain measure 
of success awaits us. A first glance would seem to show 
that these two points of view have far more in common 
than the uncompromising attitude of their respective 
partisans would ever lead us to suspect. 

We have just seen that Origin and Validity, though 
standing primarily for purely theoretical points of view, 
present an antithesis of which the force and sharpness 
is largely due to an underlying opposition between two of 
the deepest-lying elements of our nature. Origin is prim- 
arily a concern of thought, Validity a matter of feeling. 
And thought is not readily brought to act on feeling, 
nor feeling persuaded to accommodate itself to thought. 
Smith's ancestry is at the mercy of the dreary 
lucubrations of the Heralds' Office. His present worth, 
on the other hand, is as he and his neighbours feel about 
it, and (up to a certain point, at least) is independent of 
disclosures on the part of Burke or Debrett. 

But we must not press this simile. To inquire into 
moral origins is no piece of gratuitous snobbery to be 
resented in the interest of the honest convictions of the 
hour. In this connection we must be respecters of 
descent. In the case of our moral habits and ideas 
descent affords a most important criterion of re- 
spectability, though taken by itself the criterion is 
inadequate. 

Moral principles are no isolated atoms. Rather they 
may be likened (for our present purpose, at any rate) to 
the functions of an evolving organism. The higher the 
organism, the more completely will a hierarchy of 
co-operating factors have been established. And in such 
a hierarchy authority will tend to be bestowed on tried 
service. For the latter offers a promise of further service 



240 R. R. MARETT v 

to come, which, if occasionally disappointing, is never- 
theless the surest amongst available means of forecast. 

In the case of the virtues, then, their previous record, 
so to speak, as distributed over the whole series of the 
affiliated forms they have assumed in the course of their 
history, may be accepted as a guarantee, good as far as 
it goes, of a future career of usefulness. Changes in 
function or even structure may have affected the family 
identity to a considerable extent. Still, a tendency of 
a more or less marked kind is likely in every instance 
to be discernible. And on this it ought to be possible 
to found some conditional anticipation of events. 

If, therefore, we understand by Origin, not some 
hypothetical first - beginning, but total back - history or 
previous record, surely it is plain common -sense that 
considerations of Origin must have some weight in our 
appreciations of right and wrong. And since it is 
equally obvious that thought unsupported by feeling is 
powerless to found a habit of will, here, then, are manifest 
indications of concurrence on which to base our recon- 
ciliation of these standpoints. 

§ 13. Let us next for a moment take stock of the 
misconstructions to which either principle is subject at 
the hands of its extremer partisans. There is clearly 
critical work for us ahead. Indeed, the outlook portends 
that, could prejudice, presumably of a metaphysical kind, 
be put at arm's length, a compromise between the two 
standpoints would quickly settle itself, to the infinite gain 
of Ethics as a specific branch of inquiry. 

(a) The uncompromising champion of Origin is all 
for ' ultimate origins ' — whatever those may be. He is 
probably at heart a materialist. And it must be allowed 
that contemporary evolutionism is only too ready to play 
into his hands. He is one of those whose perverted 
taste for the transcendental leads them to confine their 
interest almost wholly to what may be nicknamed c the 
science of prehistorics.' This constitutes a region of 
inquiry wherein the imagination can roam at its own 
sweet will, untrammelled by books of reference or other 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 241 

base mechanical apparatus. Such a person has a ' short 
way ' with the upholder of Validity. If his mythical 
protanthropus is credited with a nasty habit of avoiding 
cold water, then baths are a worthless convention, and 
homo sapiens is a fool for his lixiviatory pains. 

Now our general policy towards such a person will 
plainly be to declare that he has not the smallest right to 
speak in the name of the Comparative Method ; that 
Origin means history ; and that the history of morals 
means the description, anthropological and psychological, 
of the relations which a certain group of interacting 
spiritual, quasi - physical, and (if we find that it pays 
ethically to go so far back) even physical forces have 
displayed during such time as the process in question 
has actually lain open to what may be termed in the 
broadest sense ' historical ' observation. 

(b) The no less uncompromising champion of Validity 
may be portrayed in a sentence. He is probably an 
idealist ; but, for all that his metaphysical prepossessions 
ought to lead him to distinguish between ' present ' and 
' ideal ' worth, he has nevertheless conceived a violent 
prejudice in favour of Things-as-they-are. 

With him we must gently reason thus. " Are not 
moral intuitions good in the good man, but, in the case at 
least of the impenitently bad man, are they not bad ? 
Granted, if you will, that our intuitions are bound to 
outrun any power we may have of testing and verifying 
their effects. But what of our generation ? Suppose that 
you who are good and I who am bad have stuck to our 
intuitions on the whole through life for better and worse 
respectively, will the object-lesson we afford be wholly lost 
on society ? Does society frame its moral standard by 
blindly compounding a mass of intuitions? Surely the very 
intermingling of moral natures must, as it were, generate 
thought. Whatever its members as individuals may do, 
society at least is sure to display some approach to 
' intelligence without passion ' — some capacity for impar- 
tially assigning effects to their apparent causes. But here 
we have a kind of moral philosophy in the making ; and 

R 



242 R. R. MARETT v 

its compiler, society, by no means deaf to historical con- 
siderations. Clearly, then, it is our duty as moralists to 
recognise the existence of this Ethics of common 
sense. Nay more, it is our one and sufficient duty, by 
contributing method in the shape of a wider inductive 
survey and closer reasoning, to make it into an Ethics that 
truly deserves the name." 

§ 14. Now in what direction do these inchoative con- 
clusions and criticisms point ? Will they not serve to 
give us an inkling both of what sort of synthesis we are 
likely to achieve, and of how we must proceed so as to 
achieve it ? 

{a) Firstly, then, as regards the sort of synthesis, or 
compromise, in prospect. Our recent conclusions are 
suggestive in the following way. Origin, we decided, was 
history, or performance up to date. Validity, on the 
other hand, seemed to stand for a more or less intuitive 
perception of the worth of certain moral principles ' in 
themselves ' ; which perception, however, though immedi- 
ately it tended to express itself as a feeling or sentiment, 
yet might be regarded as to some extent embodying the 
results of a previous acquaintance with the history of the 
moral experiments of mankind. At the same time we 
were made aware of the extreme indirectness of the 
process whereby this knowledge came to exert an influ- 
ence on the conduct of the individual. It looked as if 
his wisest policy on the whole was to rest — provisionally, 
as it were — on his intuitions. But we may be sure that, 
if the facts of life, subjective and objective taken together, 
show it to be, and to have ever been, his wisest policy to 
put the logic of feeling before the logic of history, the 
science which aims at rationalising morality will have to 
pronounce the policy and the logic that guides it in the 
strictest sense of the term reasonable. No doubt, as we 
saw, the social consciousness is in a manner capable on 
its own account of elucidating the conditions of moral 
conduct. Nay more, it seemed to do this in so impersonal 
and objective a way as hardly, one might suppose, to 
include amongst these the condition involved in this need 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 243 

and inclination on the part of the individual moral agent 
to trust to his intuitions. The social consciousness, how- 
ever, is something that exists between members of society 
who before they are anything else are ' persons.' Hence 
it cannot, in virtue of its own impersonality, undertake to 
ignore a condition that applies, if not collectively, yet 
distributively and individually, to those socially-minded 
persons for whom it legislates, namely the need and in- 
clination felt by every moral subject to interpret the moral 
life from within itself rather than by reference to its 
circumstances. All of which would seem to hold good 
ethically, whether as metaphysicians we choose to call 
this tendency ' provisional ' in view of some anticipated 
apotheosis of the mere understanding, or prefer to regard 
the priority of the intuitive to the discursive reason as 
from every point of view final for the human spirit. 

Thus a first glance would seem to indicate that an 
intuitionism, tempered by critical reflection, yet character- 
istically and predominantly an intuitionism, is the Ethics 
natural and proper to man. So much for the claims of 
Validity. On the other hand, the expert investigator of 
moral Origins would likewise seem to have plenty to do. 
His function is to be editor-in-chief of that ' critique of 
moral confidence,' apart from which such confidence is 
indistinguishable from mere rashness. The moral subject 
does not walk by faith because faith is blind, but, on the 
contrary, because, purblind as it is, it is yet the most long- 
sighted of his mental powers. 

(d) Secondly, as regards method. The criticisms of 
the previous section foreshadowed a simple, and, I hope, 
adequate, plan of procedure. They showed us that we 
are dealing with two parties, each of which has been led 
by its own ' irreconcilables ' to overstate its case. Evi- 
dently, then, our policy as would-be arbitrators is, so to 
speak, to summon mass-meetings of each party in turn. 
Face to face with their pretensions, let us try to reason 
away whatever therein seems excessive. Could this be 
done, the formality of a final adjudication ought not to 
delay us long. 



244 R - R - MARETT v 

To particularise, let us first confront the 'evolutionary' 
inquirers into Origin with the ' facts,' and ask them 
whether their working hypotheses do not practically fail to 
account for the almost unconditional Validity of certain of 
the ' higher ' — more ' spiritual ' — moral motives. Then, 
on the other hand, let us contrive such a version of the 
rights of Validity as shall secure it undisputed primacy, 
and yet not absolute immunity from all control, direct or 
indirect, on the part of the study of Origins. It will 
thereafter but remain to draw up some sort of balance- 
sheet of concessions given and received, in order to 
determine for each principle its legitimate share of 
authority in morals. 

V. Mere Origin as an Ethical Standpoint 

S i 5. That there are evolutionists and evolutionists is 
being gradually recognised, even by those who are disposed 
to distrust all alike that arrogate to themselves this title. 
For our present purpose, however, they must revert to all 
the inconveniencies of close companionship. In regard to 
morals, at least, let them be treated as being of one mind. 
To the ethical portions of the Descent of Man and to the 
Data of Ethics let there be ascribed a common faith, the 
faith of naturalism, and a common set of working 
principles, the principles of natural selection, of the 
association of ideas, and so forth. Possibly injustice will 
hereby be done to the individuals concerned (though of 
individuals, if only for reasons of space, there will be little 
mention for good or ill). But this is to be condoned 
on account of the greater ' objectivity ' that may by this 
means be given to something that can only be described 
as an ' atmosphere ' — an atmosphere thick with meta- 
physical bacilli which the average man of science (is he 
not used to vitiated atmosphere ?) breathes with comfort 
doubtless, but not perhaps without a certain cost. 

The evolutionists that I have in my eye — the ex- 
tremists of whom I would present a composite impres- 
sion — may be charged with subscribing to some form 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 245 

of that moral philosophy to which Mr. Spencer has 
given the question-begging name of ' rational utilitari- 
anism.' 1 In support of such a position they are wont 
to bring forward an array of evidence which (in my 
opinion at least) would be sufficiently convincing, were 
it but strictly relevant. Nature, they assert, that is, 
physiological nature, is wholly given over to an 
'unconscious utilitarianism '—understanding here by 
' utility ' the quality of making simply for survival. It is, 
for instance, in view of this ' biological end ' (for these 
naturalistic philosophers are prodigal of psychological 
metaphor) that protective mimicry produces the leaf- 
pattern on the butterfly's wing. The whole essence of 
instinct, in short, consists in this its function of 
protectiveness. Its be-all and end-all is to modify the 
play of the vital forces to the profit of the organism in its 
struggle for existence. 

Well, suppose we grant this. Suppose we say that, 
regarded as an ' empirical law,' the generalisation fairly 
fits the ' facts.' Ethically, however, the crux of the 
utilitarian argument does not, and can not, lie here. Why 
forsooth must we take the alleged ' law ' for more than it 
is logically worth ? We have been presented with certain 
1 facts ' — certain things that are, and moreover are in 
virtue of physiological nature being what it is. But why 
therefore conclude, as if the parity of reasoning were 
unquestionable, that utilitarianism, in the sense of the 
pursuit of sheer survival, provides the ' law ' {i.e. policy, 
not generalised observation) that ought to govern the 
conscious nature of man ? 

" At any rate a most familiar crux," says the 
naturalistic philosopher. " The things that are and 
the things that ought to be — the inevitable ' ditch.' 
But we have not the smallest intention of jumping it, 
because we do not want to get across. There is fairly 
firm walking-ground on our side. On the other side — 
well, our friends who are after Free Will, the Absolute, 
and so on, may be standing still in order to think better, 

1 Cf. Data of Ethics, § 21. 



246 R. R. MARETT v 

but they certainly do not seem to be getting on." — " But 
we," let us answer, " are with you on your side of the ditch. 
With you we entrust ourselves to the ' facts ' ; and would 
inquire with you whether they all point one way." 

§ 1 6. For there are, or have been, those loftily unpractical 
metaphysicians who would declare that to reason from 
the ' is ' of empirical science to the ' ought ' of normative 
Ethics is nothing short of a paralogism. That free or 
unconditioned will has alone the right to pronounce the 
' ought ' is, they would contend, an axiom. Which axiom 
rests on a priori grounds of proof. Wherefore it is bound 
to remain wholly unaffected by any merely phenomenal 
evidence of a ' trend,' be it physiological or psychological, 
in human nature. 

But they are at best but dubious allies of Validity that 
thus seek to cut it off ' as if with a hatchet ' from Origin. 
Moreover, whilst their talk makes for unconditional dualism, 
they live (like the rest of us) a life of distracted monism. 
The ' ought ' of their practice gives the lie to the absolute 
' ought ' of their books. To their concrete consciousness 
(for are not they, even as we are, human ?) the ' ought ' of 
practical life is a unity qualified by an inner diversity. It 
is two things at once — subject to actual warring experi- 
ences, and assertive of a de jure authority to combine these 
under a law. No, there is almost more hope for that other 
apriorist Mr. Spencer, who, if he renders ' ought ' com- 
pletely superfluous by treating it as the empty subjective 
echo of an inflexible objective ' is,' at any rate errs in the 
cause of synthesis. And even cocksure materialistic 
synthesis is better than the dualism that spells philo- 
sophic despair. 

Let us, then, stick to our initial resolve to be 
experimental. Let us entrust ourselves to the guidance, 
uncertain though it needs must be, of a critical empiricism. 
For us there shall be a psychological ' ought ' that is no 
less empirical fact in its way than the uncompromising 
'is ' of instinct. We shall frankly admit it as part of our 
working hypothesis with regard to moral obligation that 
certain determinations ' from without ' do as a matter of 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 247 

' fact ' form a moment m it. On the other hand, we 
shall no less frankly assume on the strength of 
' appearances ' — on the testimony of consciousness, to wit 
— that we are also able to some extent to determine our 
own courses. Such a double-edged provisional view is not 
dualism, but its antidote. It postulates no ultimate incom- 
patibility, but rather foreshadows eventual convergence. 
Origin and Validity, if ever they are to fight it out and 
be friends, must first be given the chance of meeting on 
common ground. And then by all means — atXivov 
dlXivov elire, to 8 ev vi/cclto). 

§17. It will perhaps be objected, however, that some 
evolutionists at all events are quite ready ' at a certain 
level of thought ' to recognise this duality in unity of the 
psychological ' ought ' ; that, in particular, a distinction 
which opposes the psychological effects of ' natural ' to 
those of ' conscious ' selection is finding its way into 
current sociology. 

Quite so. The distinction is there. But is it used ? 
It is old enough, indeed, to have borne fruit. For it goes 
back as far as Bagehot — that most level-headed of 
the exponents of Development. Already in Physics and 
Politics we find the contrast drawn between the savage 
mind, " tatooed all over" with its indelible unalterable 
notions, and the mind of one living in the " age of 
discussion," who can put off the old man in favour of 
the new almost as readily as he can change his coat. 
But in the mouths of Bagehot's successors the distinction 
survives as a vague platitude. (After all, what can be 
vaguer than current sociology ?) Or worse, where Bagehot 
employed a few picturesque expressions to differentiate 
the two stages of a continuous evolution, the solemn 
parade of a technical antithesis now gives the suggestion 
of an absolute separation. ' The savage is selected, the 
civilised man selects ' — this is the sort of statement we 
read, or might read any day. 

But it is just this kind of phrase-making with a 
hatchet that is not wanted in comparative psychology. 
For, when we speak of the effects of ' natural ' as opposed 



248 R. R. MARETT v 

to those of ' conscious ' selection, what ought we to mean ? 
Surely, the pure instincts. But every genuine student of 
social and moral origins knows that, as far as the pure 
instincts are concerned, he is, for the practical purposes of 
his science, as far off from them when dealing with the 
savage as when dealing with civilised man. For example, 
the analogies between the habits of animals and the 
customs of the most backward native of Australia prove 
so faint as to cast no light at all on any of the special 
developments within the moral nature of the latter. The 
savage is no automaton. He reveals more ' inwardness ' 
the more closely he is studied. Doubtless, however, he 
differs from his civilised brother in being relatively 
unselective. He too has his principles. But they come 
to him early in life, and, when they come, they come to 
stay. Hence Nature tends to deal with his heresies 
somewhat after the manner of a Spanish inquisitor. She 
gets at the heresy through the heretic. But with civilised 
man the inquisitorial method of conversion is on the 
whole a failure. One martyr makes many proselytes. 
Principles have, as it were, made themselves independent 
of persons. Consequently they must be acquitted or 
condemned on their own merits by a jury of their peers. 
Or, to vary the metaphor, the struggle for existence is 
transferred from civilised mankind to his ideas. The 
ideas fight, and the civilised individual, being ' adaptable,' 
finds salvation by consorting with the winner. But the 
most primitive 'Why -why' is also reflective and 
' adaptable ' — at any rate in regard to the smaller 
matters of life. Generally and on the whole, he too is the 
self-determining man, and not the animal which is 
determined. The presumable instincts of some far-off 
progenitor cannot, by the most ardent advocate of 
' parallelism ' as a principle of constructive psychology, be 
said to have reproduced themselves at all directly or 
exactly in the sentiments and ideas that ' react ' — as the 
phrase is — upon his conduct. These instincts may, or 
may not, in some metaphysical sense have been gradually 
'translated ' into terms of consciousness. The translation, 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 249 

however, is at any rate of so free a description that the 
working psychologist is bound to distinguish, and to rate 
at a certain value of its own, the peculiar contribution of 
the translating mind. 

What, then, is wanted in the comparative psychology 
of morals? The answer is obvious — "Not question- 
begging terminology, but question-solving research." For 
ours is the empirical ' level of thought ' ; and the empiricist 
has no business to decide a priori whether a man's sense 
of Validity enables him wholly or in part to guide him- 
self, or whether Origin (in the naturalistic sense of 
instinct), operating ' subliminally ' as a vis a tergo, does 
all the guiding for him. He must put aside extreme 
metaphysical views, such as that all consciousness is mere 
' epiphenomenon,' or, contrariwise, that all consciousness 
as such involves selectiveness in the sense of spontaneity. 
His business is to go to the facts — to let them speak for 
themselves. Now his facts are prima facie all of a piece, 
in that they are all alike psychical. On the other hand 
their import is ambiguous, some making for determinism, 
others for freedom. Hence he is bound to work in the 
first instance on the hypothesis of a duality in unity. He 
must concede the possibility of there being two moments 
in the moral nature, a ' fatal ' and a ' free.' And he must 
try his best to disentangle these two threads, when 
analysing a given ' mixed state ' of consciousness, by 
means of such empirical tests as the appearances 
themselves suggest. 

When, however, we would seek for enlightenment on 
this, or any other, point in psychological histories of moral 
evolution, behold none worthy of the name are in 
existence ! Who, then, shall blame us if as irresponsible 
essayists we venture in a fragmentary way to anticipate 
the tenor of such an investigation ? 

§18. Let us, then, first consider the case of a specific 
development throughout which the leading part would 
seem to be played by the ' fatal ' moment in our moral 
nature. 

When the savage embarks on matrimony he is moved 



250 R. R. MARETT v 

thereto by a considerable variety of converging ' causes ' — 
to use a neutral term. In the background, according to 
the evolutionist, there must be postulated as most 
' original ' cause of all a mating instinct. This, of all 
' deferred ' instincts, is, he maintains, the most complex. 
It embraces diverse moments, the ' objects ' of which range 
from the mere gratification of appetite, or of a jealous 
desire for ' sexual appropriation,' to the cherishing, feeding, 
housing, and protecting, of wives and offspring. All this, 
however, is in the background. The practical anthro- 
pologist knows of instinct only as a hypothetical something 
that has precipitated and particularised itself in a mass 
of customs. These customs, no doubt, are relatively — 
but only relatively — ' blind.' It is true that, for example, 
the time and mode of his marriage are virtually pre- 
determined for the tribesman. But to say that imitation 
and tradition ' insensibly ' put their special, and, as it were, 
local, stamp on the plastic congenital tendency is either 
to speak in a metaphor, or to go beyond the facts. It 
were indeed far truer to say that a specifically social 
consciousness, though of a rudimentary kind, has already 
come into play. Nor are higher manifestations of its 
influence far to seek. Marriage custom as supported either 
by an actively persecuting public opinion, or by a system 
of gentile vendetta encouraged by public opinion, is 
nascent law. Or again, disasters, whether coincidental or 
causally connected, attending the violation of marriage 
custom concur with various other grounds and occasions 
of belief in a supernatural principle to reinforce ancestral 
usage with the authority of religion. And though, as 
compared with law, religion may be somewhat capricious 
in its choice of a social cause to champion, yet as often as 
it happens to take the side of salutary practice, it is 
probably the more effectual ' pro-ethical sanction ' of the 
two. Further, with the coming into being of such legal 
and religious ordinances — which, as a rule, will coincide 
in their injunctions, as for instance when they jointly 
prohibit marriage within the kin, or with certain kinsfolk 
— there must correspondingly arise (the evolutionist at 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 251 

any rate cannot disallow this appeal to his ' law of 
association ') prudential considerations in the breast of the 
individual. Which considerations, i must be admitted, 
constitute integral factors in a social consciousness, seeing 
that in respect to the conduct they enjoin, though not as 
regards the motive they allege, they are actually on a par 
with ethical judgments proper. Nor indeed are indica- 
tions lacking of the existence of distinctively ethical 
sentiments and ideas on the subject of love and marriage 
in the minds of the most backward savages known to 
anthropology. Two illustrations must suffice. Let us 
note how such deliberate and solemn pronouncements as 
the ' ten commandments ' at initiation or the wedding- 
address — not to mention the thousand folk-tales and 
proverbs that lightly flit from mouth to mouth — exalt 
the virtues of the good husband for their own sake and ' in 
themselves,' that is, as simply fine and admirable. Or 
again, let us note how the rhapsodies of the love-sick swain 
(though doubtless apt to be tinged with a more or less 
delicate sensuality — such as appears so frequently in their 
modern counterpart !) yet are found likewise to profess 
a tenderness and disinterestedness of affection that 
argues the presence of a certain ethical ideal amongst 
the incentives of courtship. 

§ 1 9. Well (taking for what it is worth this perfunctory 
sketch of a vastly complex development), what are we to 
make of the ' causes ' alleged ? Do they make on the 
whole for determinism, or do they make on the whole for 
freedom ? On the face of them all the causes are alike 
psychical. Some are ethical, the rest are (in Mr. Spencer's 
phrase) ' pro-ethical.' If a non-ethical determinant, 
namely instinct, lurk in the background, it must be 
discovered by the flavour of ' Origin ' that it imparts to 
its effects in consciousness. Perhaps the adherent of 
Validity exclaims : " If the claimant cannot appear in 
person, surely the case goes by default." — No, as empirical 
psychologists, we have decided to hear him through his 
representatives. If, however, these halt and hesitate in 
their report, that is his look-out. 



252 R. R. MARETT v 

Let us allow, then, in regard to these causes, that, 
although all are alike in being psychical, and even, in 
a broad sense, purposive, they form a mass of ambiguous 
appearances. In the case of some the ' biological end ' 
of sheer survival seems 'really' to be subserved. In the 
case of others the enhancing of the worth of life seems 
sufficient motive ' in itself Sometimes the (assumed) 
primordial instinct seems directly reproduced in the 
conscious tendency. Sometimes it seems replaced by 
something independently authoritative. Nor is the 
ambiguity noticeable merely when we look at the facts 
of consciousness 'from the outside.' When we look into 
ourselves it feels at times as if we were half unconsciously 
shaping our policy to suit our instinctive leanings, at 
other times as if we were compelling those leanings 
to subordinate themselves to our sense of worth and 
right. 

Let us, therefore, give the naturalistic thinker a fair 
hearing when he pleads for 'original' survival -seeking 
bias as the predominant moment in man's career as 
a domestic being. Let us even put up with such 
exaggerations as there may be in the statement of his 
case. When the most that he can affirm is a relative 
predominance, and no definite criterion of predominance 
is to hand, the literary device of ' colouring ' may not 
unpardonably be employed as a scientific make-shift. 

8 20. " The moral sentiment," we shall suppose our evolu- 
tionist to argue, " which makes itself felt in the domestic 
virtues, is on the whole and predominantly but the slavish 
echo of a congenital tendency. With this tendency the 
sentiment in question is doubtless out of harmony at times. 
To that extent, however, it is out of harmony with man's 
real and abiding welfare — to wit, the welfare that consists 
in surviving and causing to survive. The home life of 
savages may present forbidding features to the idealisers 
of love and marriage. Their semi-instinctive customs, 
nevertheless, are capable of sustaining a breed of hardy, 
and so presumably happy, men. Nor does the civilised 
man, for all that he may be shocked to hear it, depart 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 253 

far from the ways of his remote forebears when bent on 
founding a family. With him as with them love is 
mostly ' blind.' Reasons, moral or otherwise, fail on 
the whole to affect it. Civilised love pays little conscious 
attention to material, and less to physiological, considera- 
tions touching the future. Nor can it even be affirmed 
that a coldly rational matrimonial policy when tried has 
been found to pay. Nor would any one maintain that 
the schemes of marriage reform propounded by the wise 
have redounded to their credit. Or once more, is it not 
significant what little prominence is given in the writings 
of the moralist to the canons of domestic duty — 
understood in any broad and scientific sense ? To marry 
' well ' is hardly reckoned amongst the cardinal virtues. 
And why ? Because the trend of instinct renders ethical 
precept on this head practically superfluous. You say 
you are free. You say that ' follow Nature ' in our sense 
of ' Nature ' cannot serve as a general rule of life. That 
may be, or may not be. At any rate, however, you must 
admit that, in respect to marriage, Nature, unwilling that 
the preservation of the race should depend on the 
fluctuations of opinion as to the merits of this or that 
ideal, has made what is virtually a saving-clause in the 
charter of freedom you suppose her to have bestowed on 
man. ' Follow Nature/ in fact, in regard to marriage, 
is a rule that is capable of satisfying prudence and 
conscience alike. It is not in point to reply that various 
pro -ethical and ethical sanctions have a perceptible 
' reactive ' effect on the family life of the veriest savage. 
These influences are ' really ' effective only in respect to 
the choice of means. The supreme end of race-propaga- 
tion is ' given ' all along. And it is no less ' given ' when 
it is somehow represented within the field of conscious 
attention than when it operates occultly as a pure 
biological force. You may insist, if you will, on the 
ideal possibilities rather than on the actual achievements 
of conscious selection in this connection. But harp as 
you will on the intrinsic reasonableness of some Platonic 
marriage-machine that shall knit woof and warp together 



254 R - R - MARETT v 

according to the principles of an enlightened psychology, 1 
you cannot make out much of a case for the superiority 
of man's to primal nature's ways. As far as the history 
of marriage goes, our evolutionary utilitarianism with its 
doctrine that sheer survival is the ' real ' standard of the 
good stands approved by your practical failure to point 
in this case to a self-supporting spiritual motive that 
works — that puts itself prominently at the head of affairs, 
and justifies its position in consciousness by the felt 
excellence of its peculiar fruits." 

And now as impartial judges let us give ear to the 
other side. 

§ 21. The upholder of conscious selection may be sup- 
posed to open his reply by remarking that his opponent 
has considerably underrated the ' reactive ' effects of such 
forces as religion and morality on love and marriage ; 
that, consequently, he will set forth with all due regard 
to the claims of history the development of a principle — 
the principle of Purity — which has precisely this appear- 
ance about it, that, whether ultimately a product of 
natural selection or not, it has at any rate cut itself 
entirely free from instinct, and acquired the position 
of an independent self-feeding focus of moral energy. 

The sense of moral purity, according to the evolutionist, 
is the outcome of taboo. How taboo itself arose, however, 
he is hardly able to explain. Why should man ' in the 
beginning ' by force of instinct have avoided contact with 
certain things by no means always palpably noxious or un- 
clean in themselves ? And why — when all allowance is 
made for the sanctioning power of custom, that ' instinct to 
conserve instincts ' — was this special kind of avoidance 
made so absolute, so invincibly will-compelling, by the 
world-wide sentiment of the race ? 

It will be said — and perhaps, historically speaking, not 
without good reason — that awe of the Uncanny is in the 
main responsible for this attitude of ' reverential detestation' 
on the part of the savage towards so much that he need 
but understand to appreciate and use. But what naturalistic 

1 Cf. Plato, Politicus, 310. 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 255 

explanation will account for the existence and power of 
this mystic awe ? The follower of Darwin will doubtless 
be content to describe it as a ' by-product ' of the growth 
of the intellect. But is this any explanation at all ? Is it 
not merely a curt restatement of the fact to be explained ? 
This fact is that certain manifestations of mind to which 
the evolutionist cannot ascribe any function — that is, 
which do not seem to him to subserve directly and in 
themselves the so-called ' ends ' of natural selection — do 
nevertheless persist by the side of other activities which 
he regards as palpably furthering survival. All that ' by- 
product ' does, therefore, is to mask the gratuitous 
assumption that some ' latent affinity ' compels the two 
groups of phenomena, the useful and the useless, to stand 
or fall together. ' By-product,' in short, represents but 
the colourless negation of a raison d'etre — presumably 
designed as a counterfoil to the teleological view that the 
so-called by-product exists and persists on the strength of 
the promise it contains, in other words, of its eventual 
destination. " But no," replies the evolutionist ; " ' by- 
product ' has doubtless its metaphysical implications of a 
nature unfavourable to teleology, but it likewise has its 
strictly scientific use. It serves to mark the actual, 
though possibly unexplained, connection between a 
particular form of ' irrational quantity ' and a particular 
race-preserving tendency. Thus for example, the mystic 
horror which the savage displays towards a corpse or 
towards an issue of blood may be connected by the use 
of a notion such as ' by-product ' or ' overflow ' with that 
definitely protective instinct which warns him, or at any 
rate warned his ancestors, of the proximity of death and 
danger. These taboos, in short, fall into line with what the 
biologist knows as ' cases of misapplied instinct' 1 Nature 
works on a system of averages, and has to allow for a margin 
of error." To all of which the champion of Validity 
replies that expressions such as * by-product,' ' overflow,' 
and ' misapplied instinct ' may have a certain designatory 
value, but that their explanatory value is nil, 

1 Cf. Darwin, Descent of Man, i. 3 ad Jin, 



256 R. R. MARETT v 

" Meanwhile," he continues, " is it not at all events 
a far cry from these questionable rudiments to that 
sentiment of moral purity which in the heart of civilised 
man calls aloud (with so much, be it admitted, of the 
solemn insistence of primitive taboo) for the scrupulous 
avoidance in thought and word and deed of all that by 
the aid of its own self-attested standard it judges to be 
morally contaminating and abominable ? Doubtless the 
evolutionist will be forward with his ' explanation ' — to 
wit, his mere ' exterior history ' — of the transition. He 
will tell us, for example, that lustration was first of all 
adopted as a means of ' drowning the infection ' — at this 
point, probably, already conceived as literally a ' spiritual ' 
infection ; and that afterwards, not so much by analogy 
as by a direct extension of scope, lustration and the 
lustral idea came to be applied to the cleansing of ' sin,' 
namely the infection derived by contact (at first including 
even involuntary contact) with certain impure things, as, 
for instance, bloodshed. But, granting the plausibility of 
this ' exterior history,' where do we find in it any 
explanation of the fact that man's sense of purity has 
shaken itself free of its back-history in becoming rational 
and ethical ? Taboo is virtually irrational. It may 
indeed in a secondary way further tribal survival by 
strengthening pre-existing habits of self-discipline. But 
primarily, directly, intrinsically, of its own right as an 
independent institution, it has no utilitarian function of 
this or any other kind to which the adherent of mere 
Origin can refer us. Taboo may provide the holy water. 
But it does not provide the sentiment that puts the water 
to a moral use." 

§ 22. Perhaps the time has scarcely come for us to attempt 
to arbitrate between the rival pleaders. But it certainly 
would seem as if in his concluding question the supporter 
of Validity offers something of a poser to the rational 
utilitarian. " Whence," he asks him, " is this sentiment 
of the moral value of Purity, this appreciation of the 
virtue that ' holiness ' imparts ? " To which the only 
possible reply forthcoming from the side of Origin must 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 257 

be somewhat as follows. " Ethical sentiment at first grew 
strong within its proper nursery, the field of domestic 
and tribal co-operation. Then it proceeded to moralise 
religion, art, and the various other intellectual superfluities 
that man had found time to enjoy, or groan under, by the 
way. This moralisation imparted to these latter as it 
were an entirely fresh dose of life. Thus, though useless 
as regards their original proclivities, they have been 
actually enabled to enrol themselves amongst the factors 
which make for the survival of civilised man." 

But these superfluities that turn out by a ' chance ' not 
to have been superfluous after all — are they ' natural,' even 
according to the working hypothesis which the evolutionist 
makes concerning ' Nature ' ? Surely it is putting a 
considerable strain on the ' Happy Accident theory ' to call 
upon it to account, not merely for ' spontaneous variations,' 
but likewise for the ' spontaneous ' persistence of all sorts 
of superfluities. These obliging ' sports ' of nature 
persevere in their being although there is no ' biological 
end ' for them to serve. Then lo and behold, one day the 
moral consciousness awakes to the fact of their existence, 
and does them the supererogatory favour of providing 
them with an ideal end ! 

We are not called upon here to decide whether the 
naturalistic ' explanation ' of the genesis of the idea of 
moral purity is metaphysically possible or impossible — 
whether it is metaphysically conceivable or not that 
' external nature,' like man, is capable of indulging in 
sports and slips, and then of making up the lost ground 
by subsequently turning them to useful account. Our 
concern here is entirely with the balance of empirical 
probability. We have left behind us that serene, if barren, 
region of philosophy where all compromise between the 
claims of Matter and Mind is on a priori grounds for- 
bidden. We are allowing that some of our propensities 
may bear as it were automatically on simple race- 
preservation, whilst others again may possess as ideal 
and spiritual motives of conduct a validity of their own. 
And we are appealing to Origin in the sense of history 

s 



258 R. R. MARETT v 

for the means of verifying, or refuting, our working hypo- 
thesis. 

Such, then, being our method, let us be the less ready 
to conspire offhand with the adherent of mere Origin — of 
the theory that the ' unconscious utilitarianism ' of outer 
nature is the real force at work in the moral consciousness 
— to conceal what even he must allow to be gaps, 
inevitable, perhaps, but still gaps, in an otherwise 
plausible argument If the history of the idea of moral 
purity ' appears ' to testify to the moralisation, by a free 
act on the part of our spiritual nature, of an unmoral and 
purposeless taboo, then, putting aside for the moment all 
metaphysical prepossessions, let us allow that the balance 
of empirical probability is in favour of the spontaneous 
origination of a specific ideal by the mind. And so too, 
if previously it appeared that the evolutionary historian of 
the development of love and marriage made out his case, 
let us be prepared to admit as regards another specific 
' end ' that the mind was on the whole but passively re- 
affirming what the animal nature had predetermined. 

§23. It would occupy too much space, were even the 
evidence available, to proceed on these lines to examine 
the human virtues one by one with the object of dividing 
them, according as a ' fatal ' or a ' free ' moment seemed 
to predominate in their constitution, into ' natural ' and 
' spiritual ' — or whatever we are to call those of them 
which on the hypothesis of an all-controlling struggle for 
bare existence have to be regarded as more or less 
unessential and adscititious. Indeed, were it possible 
thus to deal with them on their individual merits, it is 
exceedingly probable that we should soon be driven to 
abandon this method of hard-and-fast contrast in favour 
of some more discriminative mode of treatment. As it is, 
however, we must work to suit our limitations. The 
most we can attempt, before proceeding to sum up on the 
question of the value of mere Origin as an ethical stand- 
point, is a rough classification of the virtues under heads 
as determined by their history, and a wholesale character- 
isation of the prevailing purport of each group according 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 259 

as it tends to emphasise the one or the other kind of end, 
the ' natural ' or the ' spiritual' 

Regarded as matter of history the virtues seem 
naturally to fall into five groups— the Domestic, the Tribal 
or National, the International, the Personal, and the 
Transcendental. Of course this, as any other classification 
of the kind, must be pronounced ' artificial ' in the sense 
that it is nothing but a piece of student's apparatus. If 
it has a principle behind it, however, it is this eminently 
natural and historical principle, that, speaking very 
broadly, this arrangement of the virtues corresponds with 
the order of their appearance in time. Some sort of 
incoherent family life comes first ; then through the clan 
something worthy of the name of tribe is reached ; then 
syncecism, intermarriage, trade, religious proselytisation, 
and, not least of all, war itself break down the hostile 
barriers between people and people ; then, compara- 
tively late in the day, the unit (who before was but a 
fraction) 'finds himself; and, latest of all, the aspira- 
tions of certain of the most unitary of the units 
towards the highest kind of individuality lead them 
to sacrifice everything to this, or some closely allied, ideal 
principle. 

If, then, we accept for working purposes this 
classification of the virtues into five groups, we shall find 
that the first two groups appear on the whole to subserve 
the ' natural ' end of race-preservation, and the two last to 
make for a ' spiritual ' self-perfection, whilst the remaining 
group presents intermediate features. 

§ 24. Of the Domestic virtues we have heard something 
already, though we were not allowed to notice in any 
detail the many-sided nature of the influence they exert 
on race-preserving conduct, as notably, for instance, when 
they pave a way for the advent of the National virtues by 
the promotion of gentile solidarity. Affection, dutifulness, 
respect, fidelity, and so forth, as between husband and 
wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, and 
generally as between all those who are bound together by 
' kindly ' (that is, kin-ly) relations, are to all appearance 



2 6o R. R. MARETT v 

the outcome of a single ' natural ' impulse ; which impulse, 
if it undergo considerable modification in respect to the 
channels along which it flows as the ' control ' of 
consciousness increases, yet at all events would seem to 
keep fairly true to its assumed ' original ' destination, the 
maintenance of a healthy and fertile breed of men. No 
doubt there are certain changes which go near to affecting its 
main character. For example, as, with the development 
of the National virtues, society grows more widely 
coherent, the mutual support of the whole brotherhood of 
blood-relations becomes less and less essential to the 
prosperity of each separate household ; so that the function 
of the family ' instinct ' is to this extent curtailed. Or 
again, as there is gradually developed a refined sense of 
the claims of personality, the ' utilitarian ' aspects of 
marriage tend to fade into the background, and romantic 
love as between ' kindred souls ' comes to assert itself 
under favourable circumstances as truly an ' end in itself.' 
To which, however, the supporter of the theory of the 
predominating ' natural ' fatality may not without some 
reason reply that, in the former case, one instinct is but 
foregoing a part of its dominion in order to make room 
for another, whilst, as regards the latter case, he may 
urge that the exigencies of ' spiritual love ' do not at any 
rate tend seriously to interfere with the workings of the 
underlying physiological cause. 

§ 25. Again, it is a colourable view that the National 
virtues, no less than the Domestic, must be ranked amongst 
the indispensable conditions of a persistent society regarded 
simply as a kind of ' natural ' organism. The traces are 
apparent in man of a ' social instinct,' which, by bringing 
about a devotion to common interests, a friendliness of 
intercourse, and a willingness to give and take, converts 
the state into a compact body, capable as such of 
asserting itself with success as against competing associa- 
tions. Patriotism, good-fellowship, and justice (not to 
mention in their detail the virtues subordinate to these 
three, whereof loyalty, charity, and honesty are severally 
examples) would seem to be the triple historical outcome 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 261 

of what — to borrow Kipling's phrase — may be called the 
' pack-law ' of the social animal — 

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward 

and back — 
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the 

Wolf is the Pack. 

Doubtless, however, the history of these virtues has 
its other side. The spirit of patriotism as exalted in the 
self-sacrifice of a Decius almost touches the Transcen- 
dental virtues. The refinements of social intercourse, 
as interpreted, for instance, by Aristotle in his analysis 
of the ' elegant virtues,' seem to take their place less 
naturally amongst the objects of an ' art of living ' than 
amongst those of an ' art of living well' Or once more, 
justice, the sympathetic respect for another's ' rights,' 
surely presupposes as a condition of the sympathy a 
' sense of rights ' on the part of the individual such as 
lies at the root of the Personal virtues. Allowing for 
all this, however, on the ground that our present contrast 
of tendencies is admittedly a drastic expedient, let us 
concede to the party of mere Origin that perhaps the 
character which shows uppermost in this group, when 
everything has been taken into account that tells 
the other way, is still that of ' preliminary virtues ' — 
appliances of group -survival, without which man must 
live ' cyclopically,' nay, in such a condition of chaotic 
atomism that, as the Jungle Book suggests, not even 
homo homini lupus would any longer be predicable of such 
a being. 

§26. To attempt to represent the Personal virtues, that 
is, the various forms of commendable self-respect, as 
altogether lacking a ' natural ' base would be, of course, 
to break off all communications with the allies of Origin. 
But this is precisely what, at our empirical ' level,' we 
can not, and must not, do. Let us, therefore, go so far 
as even to accept the theory that, of all the instincts 
proper to the biological organism, self-preservation is 
the most original. " For the individual organism," argue 
the defenders of this view, " is historically prior to the 



262 R. R. MARETT v 

social. It is true that the most rudimentary forms of 
life look like 'jellified republics.' But their constitution 
is not really political. Either the parts cohere, and the 
economy they compose is therefore to some extent 
physiologically ' internal/ and thus individual as against 
them. Or they tend to split off and become each an 
independent centre of vitality — once more the individual." 
Well, be this as it may, let us be prepared to allow that 
the socially respectable tendencies of man as self-regarding 
— the laudable ambitions, implanted in him by tradition 
and training no less than by instinct, to live, to love, to 
own, to enjoy, to be distinguished in his person, to be 
forcible in his personality — are in some degree, at all 
events, the historical outcome of that nisus to persist 
though it be at the expense of others, which all living 
matter manifests in one or another form. 

But is this the only side — or the striking side — to 
the history of these virtues ? Has not the original nisus 
in a most remarkable way ' translated ' itself out of a 
mere ' will to live ' into a ' will to live well ? ' " What 
does not bear on survival is by-product," is the curt 
answer of the upholder of natural selection. Well, we 
cannot discuss that ' explanation ' here. At least, 
however, let us note that, in connection with the Personal 
virtues, ' Nature ' would seem to allow the superfluous ' will 
to live well' considerable play. It is not the force and 
range of the human appetite for personal well-being that 
is, naturalistically, so unaccountable. It is rather the 
extraordinary extent to which that appetite, when 
circumscribed by a due regard for the similar appetites 
of others, can be indulged without prejudice, and 
yet without apparent assistance, to the struggle for bare 
existence. Most unaccountable fact of all from this — and 
indeed from any — point of view, man would seem actually 
capable of deliberately framing, and carrying out, the 
resolution to put an end to his life. But can this be 
regarded as mere exhaustion and pale extinction on the 
part of the natural propensity to persist ? Is it not, rather, 
to all appearance the positive conquest of instinct by 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 263 

something absolutely alien to it ? How can instinct have 
generated that out of itself which from above, as it were, 
turns upon it and slays it ? How can the stream rise 
proprio motu above its source ? 

§ 27. At precisely the other end of the moral scale to 
suicide we find the Transcendental virtues, and from them 
may hope to obtain a less ambiguous illustration of the power 
of the human will to prevail against Nature ' even to the 
death.' These virtues embody the aspiration towards a 
more or less unconditional perfection of existence — the 
' life after God.' To the most refined spirits they appear 
to contain ' in themselves ' the promise and foretaste of 
such a life. Holiness, pure unselfishness, the love of the 
ideal — these seem not so much to be 'of the 'natural 
life ' as ' above ' it. Representing, then, as they do the 
supremest and maturest effort of morality to transcend itself, 
these virtues do not lend themselves readily to historical 
derivation, if ' history ' is to mean biology. No doubt the 
biologist can point to plenty of instances of apparent 
self-devotion occurring in the animal world — the mother- 
bird that risks her life for her offspring, and so on. But 
does the parallel quite hold good — any more than that of 
the savage, or indeed the civilised man, who is prepared 
to die fighting for home and country ? Does such 
bravery, save in rare and easily distinguishable cases, 
amount to ' devotion to principle ' ? It is by the lofty and 
broad ideality attaching to them as motives, rather than 
by any particular form of objective manifestation, that the 
Transcendental virtues make themselves known. Which 
essential ideality of theirs it is that indicates a close 
connection between their development and that of the 
higher forms of Personal virtue. For it is characteristic 
of them that, whereas they cause themselves to be pursued 
almost apart from considerations of personal or even 
national survival, they nevertheless, by the intense subjec- 
tivity of their appeal to the individual consciousness, tend 
to suggest a quasi-personal interest and value that is 
somehow able to outlast the phenomenal fact of death. 
" Simply the miser and his gold," says the evolutionary 



264 R- R- MARETT v 

associationalist. " Your ' martyr of conscience,' just like 
the suicide or any other kind of madman, is a victim of 
the idee fixe!' — Perhaps. But this is at all events to put 
additional burthen on the theory that Nature in the sense of 
blind Chance stumbles along a mean of coincidences, and 
touches passing perfection in producing and preserving the 
' average man.' 

§28. The International virtues may be taken last in 
order on the ground that they present mixed features. Thus, 
on the one hand, the principle of ' syncecism ' may be 
invoked in favour of a ' natural ' explanation of their 
development. For, undoubtedly, it furthers group-survival 
that the hospes should under certain conditions be 
recognised in the hostis. The area of trade, marriage, 
military alliance, and so forth, being widened, the tribe is 
reinvigorated by the introduction of fresh blood and fresh 
ideas. On the other hand, a humanitarianism, which 
contemplates ' the parliament of Man ' as an ideal pos- 
sibility, and which, moreover, has borne actual fruit in such 
an act as the abolition of slavery throughout Christendom, 
has rather the appearance of a spontaneous creation on 
the part of our moral and rational nature. The alternative 
view presumably is that, in so far as humanitarianism does 
not ' assist natural selection ' by serving as a specious 
cloak for national aggrandisement, it is an ' overflow,' and 
a dangerous kind of ' overflow ' at that. A curious notion 
this, that Nature should grow ever more wild and freakish 
in her promptings as man feels himself to attain more 
nearly to steadfastness of ideal purpose and endeavour ! 

§ 29. And now to sum up on the subject of the value of 
mere Origin as a standpoint and starting-point of ethical 
explanation. 

We have tried to look at matters from the point of 
view of Origin (understanding, however, by Origin, not 
any occult fons emanationis, but simply past history) ; 
and what do we find ? Not by any means that the 
moral of the facts is unambiguous ; much less that it 
is unambiguously in favour of the contentions of ' rational 
utilitarianism ' — or, to give it the name it deserves, 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 265 

' naturalistic utilitarianism.' For there was borne in upon 
us (by the help, it is true, of some very violent contrasts) the 
suggestion of a tendency superinducing itself upon a 
tendency — of a spiritual process growing out of a natural 
process, and yet modifying, and even transcending, it. It 
was far from appearing that survival (in the evolutionary 
sense of race-preservation) is the end that wholly, or on 
the whole, has weighed consciously with the successful 
type of man. On the contrary, it took some special 
pleading to show even that survival was the general 
motive presented in the ' preliminary virtues.' Thus the 
appearances seemed to tell, if anything, against the theory 
of ' rational utilitarianism,' so far as the latter might be 
supposed to base itself on experience proper, and, in its 
'normative' capacity, to argue from a genuinely empirical 
' is ' to a no less empirical, that is, experimental, ' ought.' 
It was, however, fairly obvious all along that, in so far as 
it pretended to rest on history, ' rational utilitarianism ' was 
a sham. Its appeal was never to veritable history, but to 
something conceived to lie at the back of history, namely, 
the ' is really ' of an a priori metaphysical naturalism — 
something, therefore, no better, but, so far as it is given to 
masquerading, worse, than the confessedly a priori ' ought 
really ' of the transcendentalist intransigeant. With 
a priori naturalism, then, considered as a ' method of 
origins ' which offers to provide an ethical ' norm,' let us 
now shortly deal. 

Evolutionary naturalism as a metaphysical theory of 
experience as a whole undertakes to formulate an all- 
embracing view of the facts of life. Needless to say, 
however, it finds this an excessively difficult thing to do. 
A certain pair of disparates, namely consciousness and 
biological process, it is quite at a loss to reconcile. Hence, 
unification being apparently beyond its reach, it has to 
resort to a pis-aller. It attempts simplification. It 
pronounces biological process the ' reality ' and conscious- 
ness the ' appearance.' Its definition of life is that it is a 
conditional inheritability of bodily functioning. Its essence 
consists in the inheritability — the quality it has of allowing 



266 R. R. MARETT v 

itself to be handed on from generation to generation. 
Thus life is a sort of Athenian torch-race. The torch, 
which is consciousness of life, is a wholly decorative 
feature of the ceremony. For it cannot afford an incentive 
to the runners. Not merely has it no value in itself. It 
cannot even stand to them as the symbol of something 
else of value to them — as the symbol of a possible prize 
to be won. 

Consciousness, then, being as such no conditioning 
element in the process it ' appears along with,' but its 
empty echo, all our valuations, seeing that they are 
necessarily ' for ' a consciousness, are empty echoes too. 
Meanwhile naturalism has projected itself beyond con- 
sciousness. The tale runs that a despairing drill-sergeant 
once bade his awkward squad — " fall out and look at 
themselves." It is not added that they actually did so. 
Naturalism, however, has performed this precise feat. 
But it is seemingly more easy to project oneself beyond 
consciousness (facilis descensus /) than from beyond to 
project oneself back. To pass from this materialism to 
the formulation of an ethical norm — from the assertion 
that all valuations are superfluous to the pronouncement 
that one kind of valuation is, notwithstanding, better than 
another — demands of one the kind of intellectual back- 
somersault that is apt to land one anywhere and nowhere 
at once. Not thus, however, does it appear to naturalism. 
" Though we be but echoes," it says, " we must try to do 
the echoing properly. Now reality is persistence in time. 
Therefore persistence in time is what we ought really to 
aim at. For only consider ! It is really that which we are 
aiming at all along — if we would but recognise the fact ! " 
— But who can make anything of such a rigmarole ? 

§ 30. Naturalism, however, is not always of this uncom- 
promising kind (though indeed the more rigorous form of 
the creed is popular enough). There is also naturalism 
the mere ' point of view.' Suppose, then, that a thinker 
of ' scientific ' leanings puts his case thus. " I do not 
pretend to unify. I am content (as you have said) to 
simplify. I merely wish to see how far a ' biological 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 267 

view ' of life will carry me. I for one reckon existence as 
the condition of all good things. Well (metaphorically, 
if you insist), so does Nature. But Nature, according to 
biology (which no doubt, as you will remind me, is 
simplifying within its own sphere when it uses function as 
an evaluatory test), has its ' sports,' its purposeless by- 
products. Then why not consciousness too ? Trans- 
ferring my biological standard to Ethics, I ask : Are these 
idealistic excesses — " exultations, agonies " — of the moral 
consciousness, on which you have laid so much stress, 
useful, that is, favourable to the prolongation of man's 
existence on earth ? If they positively interfere with 
this result, I for one vote that they go. If they neither 
hinder nor help, I say that they are not worth the 
serious attention of a truly practical man. If, however, 
they are of use, biologically speaking as it were — ah ! 
that would be another matter altogether." 

To which let us reply : " As tried by your test of 
' function ' (which, whether you allow it or not, harks back 
to the idea of reality as persistence in time), surely these 
excesses, as you are pleased to call them, of the moral 
consciousness are no purposeless accidents, since they are 
not eliminated as the race evolves, in the way that 
biological ' sports ' are eliminated, but persist, nay flourish 
ever the more wantonly the farther man proceeds along 
the path of secular change." 

Now doubtless there are more heroic ways in which 
philosophers have sought to rid themselves of such a foe. 
They have, for instance, refused on a priori grounds to 
regard goodness as in any way conditional — whether upon 
the maintenance of the bodily life, or otherwise. But we 
have chosen to meet the empiricist on his own ' level.' 
We have appealed to his own standard of reality — per- 
sistence in time. If, then, it turn out when the ' facts ' are 
examined that certain moral sentiments and ideas, to 
which he cannot ascribe any particular race -preserving 
function (for it must be a particular and specific function 
if he is to conform to the requirements of biology), do 
nevertheless refuse to be eliminated, but persist and acquire 



268 R. R. MARETT v 

strength as they go, will he not admit that they have a 
prima facie empirical validity of their own ? And suppose 
he do, will not he go a step farther ? 

We are not imputing to this upholder of naturalism in 
a modified form any definite materialistic creed. We do 
not ask him, therefore, to reconsider such a theory as that 
consciousness is an echo, an epiphenomenon, or what not, 
in favour of the view that consciousness may after all be 
capable of ' loading the dice ' — of bringing about co- 
incidences in a way that the mathematical doctrine of 
chances cannot warrant. We are only asking him to 
proceed a step farther at the same empirical 'level' that was 
adopted at the start. He is supposed to have allowed on the 
strength of the historical ' appearances ' that a prima facie 
validity of their own attaches to certain ' spiritual ' 
tendencies as distinguished from other ' natural ' tendencies 
which have a use that is biologically obvious. Well, at 
this point — so far as history goes, so far as the standpoint 
of mere Origin serves him — he stops. There seems to 
be, historically speaking, so little to choose between the 
validity of the one, and the validity of the other, set of 
motives, that we obtain no unambiguous ' is ' with which 
our experimental ' ought ' may be brought to conform. 
We are left inquiring : Which of the two kinds of motive 
has, empirically and for us, the higher validity ? Mere 
Origin, it seems, cannot tell us. But is there no supple- 
mentary test ? The following, then, is the further step 
which we ask our friend of ' scientific ' leanings to take 
with us : Will he stand by and offer us his criticisms 
whilst we consult our inner sense of Validity to see 
whether it can supply us with a moral criterion of a more 
nicely discriminative kind than mere Origin seems able to 
provide ? 

VI. Validity as an Ethical Standpoint 

\ 3 i. Our farther step, it has been agreed with the up- 
holder of naturalism as a mere point of view, must not take 
us beyond the.empirical ' level.' In a sense, then, we can- 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 269 

not leave history. We may have done with ' back-history ' 
— with mere Origin. But there is also present history — 
the latest, still unfinished, chapter of the history of Man. 
Which latest chapter may, for our present purpose, be 
held to consist of psychological matter, and that mostly 
of the kind acquired by ' introspection.' Now intro- 
spection, paradoxical as it may sound, is essentially a 
historical method. The introspective psychologist as such 
undertakes to be [ scientific' But this is to have already 
transcended the bounds of a purely ' solipsistic ' interest in 
self. For by that resolve he commits himself to the task 
of observing what is psychologically common to himself 
and other persons. He is, as it were, chartered by himself 
and them to describe the appearance to itself of a typical 
mind of to-day ; and, if he cannot make the ' personal equa- 
tion,' it is simply bad introspection. Meanwhile, of course, 
all introspective work tends to wear a sort of ' solipsistic ' 
colour on its surface. I naturally do not emphasise the 
all-pervading assumption that this of mine is also yours. 
For by that same assumption the direct proof or refutation 
of my assertions lies within your reach. Why, then, should 
you have your attention distracted from the facts described, 
by being forced to hear at the same time how I in some 
more or less indirect fashion have come to believe them 
to be the common property of our minds ? 

What power, then, has introspective psychology to 
assist us at the present juncture ? It will be remembered 
that the back-history of the virtues appeared to present 
us with two classes of motive, the ' natural ' and the 
' spiritual,' both having a certain prima facie validity of 
their own, even as tried by naturalistic standards ; and 
that, therefore, we felt ourselves driven to seek for some 
supplementary test that might yield us an unambiguous 
' ought,' whenever (as in practice must constantly occur) 
the need should arise for us to set one kind of motive 
against the other, and, for better or worse, to choose 
between them. In search of which test we have 
proceeded from ' back- history ' to 'present history.' 
What, then, does the latter tell us ? 



270 R. R. MARETT v 

Surely this — -that, as empirical matter of fact, the 
moral consciousness of the normal individual of to-day 
bids him, in every case of conflict between principles, 
to clwose the ' higher ' ; enables him immediately to 
distinguish in a general zvay between ' spiritual ' and 
' natural ' principles ; and, at the same time, teaches him to 
recog'nise the one kind as in itself of ' higher ' validity 
than the other. 

Now this, I would maintain, or something yielding an 
analysis approximately the same, 1 is introspectively the 
fact. Nor have I any objection to restating the matter 
from a point of view more acceptable to the evolutionist. 
I am equally ready to maintain it to be the fact that the 
successful individual of a successful race to-day normally 
feels thus, and, what is more, that he normally tends to 
' act up ' to such a feeling. 2 I would even bargain with 
the evolutionary materialist and say that, if he will admit 
that these intuitional promptings form an important class 
of ' appearances ' which he can neither incorporate within 
his system of utilitarian ethics nor explain away, I for 
my part am willing to concede as a bare possibility that 
the successfulness of that ' higher life ' for which these 
promptings pave the way may after all in some un- 
intelligible way be its ' biological reason.' But I insist, 
meanwhile, that the moral consciousness gives no hint 
that there is, or could be, any such reason at the back 
of these its most solemn injunctions. Nay more, I would 
add that, if any hint of the kind intrude itself from 
some extra-moral region of thought, a shock of moral 
revolt is the natural result. 

§32. Nor does introspective psychology merely show 
us that these intuitional promptings speak the master- 

1 The reader may prefer Wundt's formulation of the law of " the hierarchy of 
moral ends," which runs as follows : " When norms of different orders contradict 
each other, that one is to be preferred which serves the larger end : social ends 
come before individual ends, and humanitarian ends before social ends " 
{Principles of Alorality (trans. Washburn), p. 140). 

2 To much the same effect a recent popular work (which, however, loses sight 
of the ' person ' in the member of society, and is thus restricted to taking an 
' outside ' view of human development) describes social evolution as ' ' the 
progressive subordination of the present and the individual to the future and the 
infinite" (B. Kidd, Principles of Western Civilisation, p. 84). 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 271 

word in morality. It can likewise show us in a manner 
why — that is, how — this is so. Let us revert to the plan 
of broadly colligating Validity with a kind of feeling and 
Origin (in the sense of the study of historical cause and 
effect) with a kind of thought. Considering this feeling 
and this thought in their relation to future action, let us 
name them respectively ' foretaste ' and ' forecast.' Why, 
then, on the showing of introspection, is foretaste rather 
than forecast supremely effective as an authoriser of 
ethical conduct ? 

(a) Well, for one thing, it is matter of direct experi- 
ence that will, though never merely strong, or the 
strongest, feeling, nevertheless depends on strong feeling 
as its proximate condition. Thinking, on the other hand, 
so far as it is no mere echo of passion, but ' real' thinking, 
that is, a process of discursive reasoning governed by its 
own laws, is ' cool.' Thus it is easy to see how ' the 
native hue of resolution ' may be i sicklied o'er with the 
pale cast of thought.' The mind cooled down by thinking 
becomes, for the nonce at any rate, and permanently, if 
it dwell too long in the world of mere possibilities, dis- 
qualified for action. Discursiveness as such means 
diffusion of interest, dissipation and distraction of attention. 
As thought moves from symbol to symbol, each of these 
must in some degree be felt. Feeling, however, as such 
involves appetition, Which appetition, though it partly 
helps to further the action of thinking, is partly wasted by 
the way. Hence each fresh step in thought levies a tax 
on the by no means unlimited fund of volitional energy 
available for the time being. Contrast the forcibleness of 
intuition. It presents an object that is distinct, because 
relatively discontinuous with its psychical background, and 
capable therefore of seizing upon the whole man. It 
presents, not one amongst several bare possibilities, but a 
content hardly discrepant with, because so absolutely com- 
plementary to and continuous with, me-now — a 'to be ' 
which even now almost ' is,' as the mental panorama is 
focussed to a vivid point and a burst of sanguine assurance 
heralds the consummating act of will. 



272 R. R. MARETT v 

(b) Further, let us note what forecast as such must 
mean for us as beings who desire to will reasonably, that 
is, so as to have the theoretical and the practical 
' conscience ' satisfied at once. A mere forecast, even 
though its framing involve a minimum of discursiveness, 
cannot, if taken as such, yield that sense of logical 
cogency which in the case of an abstract proof expresses 
itself as a feeling of conviction having close affinity to the 
feeling of moral obligation. So long as we are but 
striving to analyse the immediate, that is, any object so 
far as it presents itself to us as a self-contained whole 
having no ' other ' that cannot be excluded for the nonce 
by the very act of mental objectification, we are subject 
to the feeling of logical necessity — of complete, if but 
temporary, satisfaction with our thought. In a case where 
we are forecasting, however, we are trying to argue from 
the present to the absent — from the known to the 
unknown. We are ' speculating,' in short, in the business- 
man's sense of the term. Hence, in proportion as we 
are aware of what we are about, we cannot but be 
haunted by a more or less lively presentiment of possible 
mistake and its consequences. It is not wholly or mainly 
from forecast, therefore, that there is born the confidence 
which can restore us to spiritual unity and set us free 
to ' identify ourselves ' with the object of desire. 

(c) Lastly, moral forecast as moral is liable to a special 
kind of ineffectiveness with which personal experience is 
likely to have acquainted us. The material out of which 
we shape a moral forecast must consist in part of facts 
relating to the nature of our own emotional leanings and 
likings. But knowledge 'of or 'about' feelings is 
different from knowing, in the sense of experiencing, 
feeling as it is ' in itself.' Nay more, the available 
mental energy being at any moment limited, the one 
kind of experience is bound, temporarily at least, to over- 
ride and outbid the latter. The sense of the feeling gives 
way to the sense of the logical relations of the concept 
whereby the feeling is represented. Reflection holding 
the attention, the feeling reflected on survives as but the 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 273 

bloodless phantom of itself. But this deadness of sensi- 
bility produced in us by self-analysis is utterly out of place 
in the presence of a call to action. To pass to the state of 
mind wherein we are able to make the feeling integral to 
and effective in the object of desire requires the forcible 
revival of the desiccated image. This, however, is bound 
to put a great strain on the imagination ; which strain 
cannot fail to communicate itself to the moral economy 
as a whole. How fatal, for example, it usually is to 
reason about the pleasures likely to accrue from a given 
course of action. As we dwell on the thought of them, 
they grow ever paler and more impalpable, till paralysing 
doubt assails us as to their worth — a doubt that probably, 
could we but know it, is not in the least justified by the 
actual condition of our power of enjoyment. How direct 
and infallible, on the other hand, is the suasion of moral 
foretaste. When intuition is allowed the upper hand in 
consciousness, what we feel at one moment is made the 
object of endeavour at the next, and never a chance is 
given to doubt and dally by the way. 

§ 33- " Well and good," answers the 'rational utilitarian.' 
" I have no doubt that introspective psychology testifies 
in some such way as you have described to a certain 
ineffectiveness of moral reflection when unsupported by a 
vivid sense of what it feels like to be moral. But you 
prove too much. The blind obedience of the slave to an 
authority he is incapable of understanding exhibits a 
' sanguine assurance ' not a whit less effective — to say the 
least of it — than that which you suppose to be supremely 
authoritative in the normal moral consciousness. So I 
ask you to come one step farther. What so immediately 
effective as instinct ? I am ready to admit, if you insist 
on it, that the application of the terms resulting from an 
analysis of human action to the kind of life or experience 
studied by the biologist is more or less metaphorical. 
But, seek as you will to expel the word ' instinct ' from 
your psychological text-books, the fact has to be faced 
that certain deep-seated forms of natural trend determine 
the human will as (I contend) no mere ideal kind of 

T 



274 R - R - MARETT v 

moral intuition has ever succeeded in doing, instilling 
absolute confidence by focussing the attention on strong 
physical feeling and on that alone. Instinct, then, by 
the showing of the very introspection on which you rely, 
is, as our naturalistic ethics also assumes, the pattern 
laid up, not in ' heaven,' but in those inmost recesses of 
our nature to which the mere consciousness has no direct 
access, whereto moral conviction must approximate in 
proportion as it is sound. The natural and not the ideal 
feelings just because they have more of the true intuitional 
flavour about them — more forcibleness and fatality — have 
the first call on our attention." 

To which the champion of Validity may justly reply as 
follows. " Introspection supports history in testifying to 
the ' fact ' that what you choose to call the instinctive 
' will ' is being steadily replaced, as civilisation and 
education advance, by a will of equal or greater energy 
that rests on the ideal feelings. It is useless for you to 
try to put back the hands of the clock. Inwardly and 
outwardly the appearances favour the view that spirit 
has come to stay. Construe the implications of this ' fact ' 
as you will. Say, if you are not going to desert the 
working assumptions of evolutionism, that spirit stays 
merely because it pays — that its validity consists, not in 
what it seems to be, but in what it does. But at least 
admit as an empiricist that practically and for us it has 
intrinsic validity. When the bent of progressive man is 
towards attending more and more to what of itself seems 
to claim more and more of his attention, why bid him 
hand himself over by a sort of spiritual suicide, by an act 
of will-renouncing will, to an apparently decaying force, the 
very existence of which ' in ' — we cannot rightly say ' for ' 
— him is not a matter of direct consciousness at all ? 
Naturalism ? Why, it is rank £/>znaturalism." 

§34. And now let us suppose the rational utilitarian, 
unable to convince us — and, let us hope, himself — that 
instinct is the prototype of the effective moral intuition of 
to-day, to fall back on his second line of defence. " Leav- 
ing instinct out of the question," he proceeds, " what of 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 275 

authority ? The savage is at the mercy of custom. 
iravTwv vo/jlos fta<rtXev<i. Well, is the civilised man who 
trusts to his intuitions a whit more self-determining ? 
Is not ' I will my station and its duties ' a survival of 
barbarism ? To put foretaste before forecast may be wise 
policy for the masses — for the white slave. But can 
intuition afford due scope for the exercise of a reason- 
able will ? Utilitarianism, rationality, science — these go 
together, and together they determine human progress. 
The intuitionist may apply to himself the words which 
the immortal Silver addresses to his fellow-conspirators : 
1 We're all foc's'le hands. . . . We can steer a course, but 
who's to set one ? That's what all you gentlemen split 
on, first and last' " 

" For look at the facts," he continues. " See what 
the despotism of foretaste involves in the matter of 
applied Ethics. What aptitude do the intuitionists show 
for tackling concrete problems ? Their catalogue of par- 
ticular virtues is a farrago of abstractions, destitute of all 
arrangement and inner consistency. And the farrago 
boasts an immutable nature. It descended wholesale 
from heaven at the time of the original ' spiritual 
influx ' ! Or at best, when evolutionism has made 
the fact of moral progress too patent to be any longer 
denied, some quibbling philosophy of ' type ' and ' stan- 
dard ' l is requisitioned to explain how this precious 
pantheon of sacred forms does somehow condescend to 
adjust itself to our changing needs and uses." 

" And all this comes of exalting foretaste at the expense 
of forecast — of dwelling on the ' quality ' of moral action 
and leaving the ' reference ' to settle itself. Mere feeling 
is only too prone to attach itself to this or that ideal, 
irrespectively of its bearing on the rest. Thus it is that a 
principle puts on ' unconditionality ' — say, the principle of 
not lying to a murderer, for all that the lie might save the 
life of his intended victim. But the psychologist knows 
better than to respect the ' man of one idea,' the victim 
of ' mental obsession.' He is typically the lunatic." 

1 The allusion is to Lecky's History of European Morals, chap. i. 



276 R. R. MARETT v 

" Meanwhile, given sound political and social institu- 
tions, controlled by intelligent men who think for them- 
selves, it will be for the best that intuitions, promulgated 
by authority, should govern the moral life of the unedu- 
cated. Since these cannot discover for themselves what 
is right, it remains that they should adopt the surest plan 
of bringing themselves to do what a superior wisdom 
decides to be to their advantage. For them let principles be 
as ' unconditional ' as you please. Here is the opportunity 
for intuitionism. I am willing to concede — though 
unfortunately your inveterate intuitionist is not likely 
to set store by the concession — that reflection ' on a sup- 
posed right to tell lies from benevolent motives ' is not for 
the uneducated. And, since the uneducated outnumber the 
educated by ten to one, I allow you that in nine cases out of 
ten a simple-minded concentration of sentiment on the 
beauty of truthfulness will best serve the cause of morality. 
For feeling, as you urge, is concentrative, calculation 
dispersive. The victim of ethical obsession, as compared 
with the puzzled blockhead who labours in the toils of a 
shillyshallying casuistry, is in the less parlous plight. 
The latter utterly fails to mobilise such moral powers as 
he has. The former at all events acts — acts immediately 
and strongly, though, apart from a wise authority in the 
background, not circumspectly. But Ethics proper is the 
concern of the educated. Show me if you can that an 
Ethics which puts foretaste before forecast is natural to 
the educated man whose highest aspiration it is to be 
self-determining — to exercise a reasonable will." 

All of which lies open to a retort which, if it be 
necessarily somewhat ad hominem, is at all events hardly 
to be rebutted from the side of mere Origin. "Who are 
you that speak of rationality ? You have to admit that a 
certain persistent feature of morality — its predominant 
ideality of foretaste — is unaccountable on the hypothesis 
that whatever fails to bear on survival must sooner or 
later be eliminated. ' By-product ' forsooth. An attempt, 
not even specious, to gloss over a negation. You 
pretend to rationalise life, nay the cosmic process. And 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 277 

behold the plain facts about morality contradict that 
boast of yours : ' Grant us the variations, and we will 
explain their subsequent history.' ' Science ' you call it. 
It is good science to give yourself up wholeheartedly to a 
working hypothesis to see how far it will take you. But 
it is bad science, and bad manners to boot, having 
planted yourself down upon what you are pleased to call 
' first principles,' to seek thence to shout all rival methods 
down, as if it were a priori demonstrable that there must 
be one path, and one path only, to the top of the 
mountain. ' By-product ' indeed. To credit an inscrutable 
chance, or, if you will, an Unknowable God, with whatever 
exceptions your so-called ' laws ' are forced to tolerate is 
an artifice worthy of the ' age of miracles ' ; and Hume, as 
you are wont to assure us, has shown that miracles 
are nonsense." 

§ 35. So much, then, for the slur of irrationality which 
evolutionary utilitarianism would cast upon the theory 
that those ideals of the moral consciousness which seem 
the highest are the highest for us as moral beings. ' He 
that is without sin,' we are tempted to say, ' let him first 
cast a stone.' And, as for the allegation that intuitionism 
tends to divorce foretaste from forecast, the reply is obvious, 
There may be a bad kind of intuitionism ; but that is not 
the kind we are now defending. Foretaste and forecast, 
according to the view we are concerned to uphold, must 
severally and alike be allotted their natural and proper 
place in one system of normative Ethics ; only the place 
of foretaste is naturally and properly the higher. 

Let us put the matter in a slightly different way. 
Let us, in order as far as possible to satisfy the rationalist, 
substitute for foretaste, with its suggestion of something 
alien to thought, namely feeling, its logical counterpart 
and equivalent, the concept of a self-justifying moral end 
or norm. Our contention may now be restated thus. 
Ethics as Ethics is restricted to the normative form. Its 
supreme principle of explanation must be an ' ought ' — or, 
if you will, that a certain ' ought ' is, and that it is, and can 
be, for us nothing else but an ' ought' " Ethics, then," you 



278 R. R. MARETT v 

say, " finally bases itself upon an appeal to authority." 
Yes, but not in your sense of ' authority.' The authority 
in question is not external to the moral subject. It is just 
his personal self — or rather that part of himself which 
appears supreme in a moral context, and in no context 
of experience appears anything but supreme for all the 
purposes of morality. 

" But we are speaking of different things," perhaps you 
urge. " You are describing Ethics the art. I, as a 
rational utilitarian, am seeking to establish Ethics as a 
science." The answer is that normative Ethics is at once 
art and science. As an art which tries to produce 
morality it posits the general object of moral conviction, 
' right for right's sake,' as the end to which its precepts 
must finally conduce. As a science which tries to explain 
morality it refers everything back to this same object 
conceived as ultimate self-explaining matter of fact. Thus 
the conformity of the practical and the rational sides of 
the moral life is from first to last secured, Both stand or 
fall together. Present worth and ideal worth, Validity as 
felt and actively sought after and Validity as contemplated 
by reflection, coincide at the apex of a system which finds 
its architectonic principle in the intuition of moral goodness 
as good, and as good for no other reason than that it is 
itself. 

§36. " But," says the critic of Validity, by this time (let 
us hope) driven to his last ditch, " Ethics after all has its 
limits. It is not life. Much less is it nature. Suppose 
I grant you that Ethics as Ethics is essentially normative. 
Is not normativeness as such, however, ex analogia hominis 
magis quam universil A certain form may be helpful, 
or even practically indispensable, when you are ' con- 
structing ' out of a certain kind of appearance. But 
what of the kinds of appearance in relation to which 
it does not help ? And, above all, what of Reality ? 
Though the microcosm take itself ever so seriously, 
is it quite prepared to absorb, or transcend, the macro- 
cosm ? " 

Well, as to life, regarded as more or less self-organised 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 279 

and self-organisable experience, there is surely no 
repudiation of the normativeness of Ethics to be feared 
from this quarter. Taken at its widest, life (in this sense) 
is teleological ; and the theory which seeks to import 
method into the work of self- organisation cannot but 
shape itself accordingly. As consciously experiencing, 
that is, experimenting, beings we take the validity of life 
for granted. Life for us may be sweet or stern ; but, 
if we ' will to live,' we are committed to the postulate 
that, despite all drawbacks, life on the whole is something 
good and sufficient ' in itself.' Now, unless the moral 
life as such is to count amongst life's drawbacks — a view 
we are wont to contradict by shutting up the persons 
who hold it in prison or the asylum — it must partake 
in the teleological character of the more comprehensive 
system. And, as a matter of fact, the place assigned 
to morals in such a system by the common opinion is 
very high. Indeed, we have already had occasion to 
protest against a prevalent notion which would actually 
lead to the identification of Ethics with the general 
science and art of conscious living, or at all events with 
that group of allied normative disciplines which together 
set before themselves the ideal of ' the higher life.' In 
which ideal the very aspiration of natural science towards 
'truth for truth's sake' constitutes an integral element. 
If the 'man of science' is not aware of the fundamental 
normativeness of his intellectual interest, and hence of 
the object thereto corresponding, it must simply be that 
in regard to the higher logic he is as Mons. Jourdain was 
in regard to prose, and ' escapes his own notice ' as a 
' constructor ' of experience. 

As to ' Nature ' and the universe, there would seem 
to be prima facie reason for taking a teleological view 
of the aggregate of ' mental ' and ' material ' appearances, 
and to be prima facie reason against so doing. As 
empiricists we do not pretend to the possession of any 
a priori clue. We abstract from amongst the manifold 
appearances one kind of appearance that for us is, 
because it seems, supremely worthy of our interest and 



280 R. R. MARETT v 

attention ; and we boldly say — ' that is the truth.' The 
object of the view we elect to hold is ideal rather than 
real because it transcends the me-now — because it has 
yet to be fully realised in actual experience, our 
experience. If, then, at our own risk we accept the 
responsibility of believing that this is both for us and 
in itself predominantly a universe in which spirit is 
realising itself, and realising itself in part through us, that 
is, by means of, and in some sense conditionally on, our 
voluntary co-operation, teleology is for us the last word 
in Metaphysics no less than in Ethics. Or if not, not. 
Meanwhile, as professed experimentalists, let us at any 
rate be practical, even to the extent of theorising to 
some ultimately practical purpose. If Ethics naturally 
takes shape round a notion of ideal moral goodness as 
bearing the signs of readability upon its face ; if Ethics, 
Logic, Art, Religion, so far as they are ' organised interests ' 
capable of standing by themselves, display each a similar 
fundamental character of normativeness ; and if the 
normativeness of one and all is identical in so far as it 
insists on the pursuit of the seeming Highest ' for its own 
pure sake ' ; then, at all events our teleological, anthro- 
pomorphic, personal, rendering of the universe is likely to 
react on all these interests with advantage — to con- 
tribute something of its own towards a general heighten- 
ing and deepening. And what is left outside ? A 
few stubborn animal passions, a dim sense of fatal 
arbitrary drivenness. And are these poor fossils and 
wrecks of time to serve, to the exclusion of maturer 
forms of experience, as determinants of the human reason 
and will? Shall they — 'must 5 they — dictate to us a 
philosophy of life and nature, whereof the bare theoretic 
contemplation renders our whole disposition towards 
practice less strenuous, less intense, less susceptible to 
the hint of immense possibilities in us and about us ? 
" But no," you say. " The effect of materialism on 
practice is nothing of the kind. It fires, it exalts 
abidingly." — Then we two are made differently. Let us 
go our several ways in peace. Perhaps after all, as Uncle 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 281 

Toby said to the fly, ' there is room in the world alike 
for me and thee.' 



VII. Final Suggestions in Favour of a Com- 
bined Use of the Two Standpoints in 
Empirical Ethics 

§ 37. "And what of synthesis?" — says the weary 
reader. " At the outset you looked forward to a relative 
unification of the two rival principles of ethical explanation. 
Nor have you shown, or indeed tried to show, that 
mere Validity can suffice us as a standpoint any more 
than mere Origin. Besides, the study of origins is an 
established industry ; and established industries die hard. 
Others ere now have made it pretty hot for naturalism 
and evolutionism. But, like Brer Terrapin in the prairie 
fire, they display a wonderful ability to 'sit and take 
it' Can you not manage, then, to allot them a corner 
of their own in your ethical laboratory ? Is there no 
specific function, even though it be a subordinate one, 
for them to fulfil ? " 

Well frankly, as regards naturalism, there can be, from 
our point of view, no parleying whatever with it. As a 
philosophy it is contemptible. As a mood it is cheerless 
and paralysing. And in any case it is always, in preten- 
sion at least, a metaphysic, and therefore at once some- 
thing more and something less than a method of em- 
pirical Ethics. 

But, though naturalism as a philosophy cannot by 
rights yield us an ethical standpoint, as a mood it can to 
some extent do this, the standpoint it favours being that 
of a narrow and sordid opportunism. Such an opportunism 
puts the objective condition ' this is what I can do ' before 
the subjective condition ' this is what I ought to do.' Nay, 
its tendency is to neglect the latter altogether as causally 
inoperative, as mere ' echo.' Thus suppose it to appear 
expedient on grounds of hygiene that extra - nuptial 
relations between the sexes should be permitted in times 
when early marriage is discouraged by custom, or when 



282 R. R. MARETT v 

in a monogamous society one sex considerably outnumbers 
the other. Opportunism would pay no heed to objections 
founded on simple regard for the principle of purity. It 
assumes that the normal conscience will sooner or later, 
and sooner rather than later, ' come round.' Or suppose 
that political economy seem to recommend the suppression 
of certain bouches inuliles, say the quiet putting away of 
the mentally afflicted or the incurably diseased. Oppor- 
tunism would be for carrying out the change in the teeth 
of all ' sentimental ' insistence on the value of the 
individual human life as such. According to this theory, 
or rather mood — for the real strength of naturalism 
depends, not on its logic, but on the success of its appeal 
to the imagination of the unimaginative — the subjective 
' necessity ' of moral principles is little else than a sham. 
And what is true of them — so it is urged — is equally true 
of moral principle in general. Exaggeration enters into 
the very marrow of the moral sense. By asking of us 
what otherwise — that is by ' reason ' and ' experience ' — 
we might know to be extravagant and impossible, it seeks 
to cheat us into a more strenuous performance of our 
tasks. But ' noble lies ' are for the sightbound self- 
hypnotising masses. The rod of enlightened authority 
and empire is a moral scepticism tempered by statistics. 

Well, there is no refuting a mood. We can but give 
it the cold shoulder. Meanwhile, so far as it pretends to 
base itself on ' reason ' and ' experience,' these, if the fore- 
going argument is to be trusted, bear witness to precisely 
the opposite effect. 

§38. With evolutionism however, it is quite otherwise. 
Useful work can be found for it to do. If it eschew 
metaphysics, and attend to its proper business, the 
historical description and explanation of vital function, it 
is a weapon in the hands of the moral philosopher only 
second in importance to the commission which bids him 
use that weapon rightly. 

For ultimately, indeed, that is, when rationalised to its 
utmost, Ethics, we have decided, must be normative. It 
must put Validity before Origin, foretaste before forecast. 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 283 

A general standard of evaluation is given by the moral 
consciousness in something which ethical thought can but 
inadequately designate as spirituality of personal motive 
in regard to social conduct. This may to some extent 
be susceptible of interpretation from a higher ' level.' 
The sympathetic metaphysician may discern therein an 
' aspect ' — a specific rendering — of the ideal of spiritual 
wholeness, of personal self-realisation, or what not. 
Ethically, however, it is just what it is to the moral 
intuition. It is a criterion of relative excellence which 
the good man feelingly — or, in a broad, but quite legitimate, 
sense of the word ' knowledge,' knowingly — has and can 
use. Given two or more possible courses of social conduct 
involving principles that appear qualitatively different, he 
can choose with certainty — moral certainty — between 
them, once he has accepted it as the ' maxim of his will ' : 
Attend to the spiritualities, and the temporalities may be 
trusted to look after themselves. 

Alternative courses of seemingly possible social conduct 
must, however, be given. Our ethical imperatives must 
always be relative to certain preferables. How, then, are 
such alternatives given ? By forecast. 

Forecast is the anticipation of a certain sort of 
consequence. Foretaste as foretaste likewise anticipates 
consequences in a sense. But the latter are — that is, are 
apprehended as — necessary and assured consequences. 
They are consequences in that they have yet to be willed 
out from ideality into reality. But such a change, viewed 
from the present standpoint of the agent, can affect but 
the degree, and not the kind, of the experience they 
embody. Whether thought of as ideal, or as realised, 
they are good for the moral subject about to act with 
one and the same quality of goodness. Forecast, on the 
other hand, deals with what for the agent must always 
appear as contingent and debatable consequences — with 
this or that means as opposed to the end. It has to 
guarantee though always doubtfully yet as best it can the 
actual possibility of the ethically preferable course of 
conduct, before mere wish can ripen into resolve. The 



284 R- R- MARETT v 

good man must always seek to do that which, in the 
broadest sense of the phrase, is ' best under the circum- 
stances.' An Ethics that is empirically normative cannot 
but regard this as the only intelligible ' best.' The 
general subjective necessity ' this is what I ought to do,' 
though prior in the logic of Ethics, that is, prior for us as 
beings who have to build on the ' fact ' of our moral 
freedom, can have neither meaning nor function apart 
from the general objective ratification ' this is what I can 
do.' To forecast which latter condition as rightly as may 
be possible constitutes an important branch of the work 
of such an evolutionism as concerns itself with the com- 
parative history of man's attempts to adapt himself to 
his environment. 

§ 39. Meanwhile the present essay does not profess to 
be a methodology of Ethics, but at most to serve in some 
sort as an introduction thereto. It will suffice, therefore, 
if we indicate quite broadly how Validity and Origin, 
intuitionism and evolutionism, as distinct principles and 
methods operating in conjunction, are to import logical 
system into Ethics in the highest attainable degree. 

This, then, at least is plain — that Ethics cannot be 
organised on the model of a despot's court, the ' ought ' 
sitting enthroned upon a dais, whilst below and respect- 
fully remote stands this and that attendant ' can.' An 
Ethics that bases itself on experience — as we under- 
stand experience — cannot afford to show the slightest 
sympathy with the dualistic view that disjoins the a priori 
from the a posteriori. On the contrary, it must seek to 
explain and justify the experience of the normal moral 
subject, who does somehow manage to combine the affirma- 
tion of an architectonic end with a due consideration for 
practicable ways and means. Thus the general body of 
ethical doctrine must present as free and full as possible a 
commingling of what we have for the sake of clearness 
distinguished as the ' subjective ' and ' objective ' elements 
or determinants. If ' ought ' and ' can ' are not to be made 
to join hands and work together for a common object 
there is an end of Ethics. But Ethics is, and will not be 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 285 

ended, so long as there are thinkers who are content to 
try to make the best of what they have got, and to 
observe experience from within instead of raising futile 
questions as to what it would look like could one get 
outside. 

Now the strength of a science is rightly held to reside 
in its axiomata media. And so we may say that it is by 
its power of firmly establishing its secondary principles 
that the soundness of ethical method is to be tried and 
tested. How, then, are ' ought ' and ' can ' — the subjective 
and objective factors — to co-operate to produce such 
secondary principles ? How, for instance, is a catalogue 
raisonne of particular virtues to be drawn up that shall 
without inconsistency present them as embodiments of 
the end and yet likewise as generalised possibilities of 
conduct ? 

By a compromise, we answer — a compromise based 
on a clear recognition of their mutual relativeness and 
dependency ; though even so the best of the bargain, in 
the shape of an appreciable balance of authoritativeness, 
cannot but fall to ' ought ' as against ' can ' — to Validity 
as against Origin. Each left to itself would initiate and 
pursue a method of its own, Validity an analytic, deduc- 
tive, and Origin a comparative, inductive, method. But 
each, unsupported and uncontrolled by the other, is bound, 
as it seems at least to the empiricist, to stultify itself by 
onesidedness and extravagance, Validity by engendering 
mere quixotism, and Origin mere opportunism. Hence, 
though each may occupy its own sanctum in the ethical 
laboratory, employing groups of specialists who have no 
time to interest themselves in the details of one another's 
work, the true and scientific account of the laws and 
principles of Ethics must always take the form of a joint 
report subscribed to by the heads of both departments. 
Nay, it were obviously best that the minutest specialist 
on either side, in order to avoid becoming the slave — 
the ' ideopath/ so to speak — of his chosen method, should 
be generally acquainted with the relations of his working 
assumptions to those of the other branch, that is, with 



286 R. R. MARETT v 

the methodology of Ethics as a whole, and thus be able 
in a broad way to make the ' professional equation ' as he 
goes. 

Analytic Ethics prevails over Comparative Ethics 
simply by reason of its greater affirmativeness both as art 
and science. And its right to be the more affirmative is 
grounded on the ' fact ' that for the actual moral subject of 
to-day, both when he is acting, and when in his theoretical 
mood he asks himself, ' Is this really and truly so for me 
as a typical moral subject trying to understand himself 
and his position,' the nature of moral principle is more 
closely bound up with the subjective, ' intersubjective,' 
if you will, since typical, but still subjective, than with 
the objective, element therein contained. In other words, 
the ' laws ' of Ethics ultimately are, in their theoretical no 
less than in their practical aspect, authoritative pro- 
nouncements rather than observed uniformities. Doubt- 
less the conditions which determine the nature of morality 
as a product are phenomenally of two kinds. There 
are determinations from within morality itself, and there 
are determinations from without. But the one kind 
which consists in the evaluatory selections of a will moved 
by the intuition of morality as worth realising in itself 
and for itself (that is, apart from any consequence save 
itself) appears to Empirical Psychology, in its introspective 
and historical capacities taken together, to cause more, 
and to explain more, than the other kind, which is com- 
posed of whatever influences control and limit the action 
of such a will without apparently sharing in its inner guid- 
ing purpose. These latter conditions that are ethically 
' objective ' (in the sense of ' external ' — not, of course, in 
the metaphysical sense of ' determinate,' which may or 
may not be an adequate expression for Nature as a whole) 
have doubtless to be reckoned with. The constructive 
affirmations of any intuitionism are always open to 
criticism on the score of objective impracticability, when 
such impracticability is the verdict of a strong induction. 
But the impracticabilities of morals are on the whole 
internal rather than physical or physiological. It is chiefly 



v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 287 

because we do not will, and do not will to will, the seem- 
ing Highest strongly enough, not because we otherwise 
cannot, that — as a matter of ' fact ' — our characters and 
conduct are found morally wanting. Broadly speaking 
in regard to the very general policies of action repre- 
sented by the particular virtues, we can, and mostly do, 
realise them all in some degree. Ethically, however, the 
important question we have to ask ourselves is : How 
can we do so in the highest degree — that is, so as to 
give each virtue that place in the system of our life 
which its relative value warrants ? Thus I can practice 
nationalism and I can practice humanitarianism. Prob- 
ably the ' best under the circumstances ' permits of 
both. But which for the general purposes of my moral 
self-realisation is to count for more ? When all has been 
said on both sides, it is to Validity rather than to Origin 
— to intuitionism rather than to evolutionary utilitarianism 
— that the good man will go for the ' rational ' solution. 

§ 40. We have sought to keep true to empiricism. If 
our conclusions favour a reflective and critical intuitionism, 
at least they are conclusions that profess to be founded 
on simple matter of ' fact' The ground on which we 
take our stand is wholly psychological. We allege no 
more than a psychological, and hence phenomenological, 
■ ought' The real ' ought ' is for your Will. We (at a 
certain personal risk of our own — for example, the risk 
of being thought illogical or foolish) have selected a 
certain view of moral experience because it seems to be 
for man (as we seem to know him both in ourselves and 
otherwise) supremely worthy of attention at the ' level ' 
of Ethics. You must attend to it at your own personal 
risk. If, by attending to it rather than to anything else 
in pari materia, you reach a Better (which is not 
necessarily a physical or biological Better, for all that 
it turns out to be not incompatible with physical and 
biological conditions !), then what the pair of us believe 
is true — true, at any rate, until something even truer 
emerges from the ' visible darkness ' that is both in us 
and about us. 



VI 

ART AND PERSONALITY 1 

By Henry Sturt 

I. Scope and Method 

i . Art is a characteristic function of personality. 

2. Artistic consciousness should be studied in its creative rather than its 

receptive form, 

3. and in artists that are familiar rather than those that are remote. 

II. The Solidarity of the Higher Life 

4. An artist's most important quality is enthusiasm, 

5. which must be directed upon objects external to himself ; 

6. these being men, or things with human qualities. 

7. The personal element is traceable even in (a) architecture, 

8. (£) nature-painting, 

9. and (c) music. 

10. Though art implies emotion, it is not to be defined as the expression of 

emotion, either self-regarding, 

11. or reflective. 

12. Though art has to do with pleasure, it is not to be defined as a form of 

pleasure-seeking, either coarse or refined. 

13. Art is not self-reduplication, though it is self-expression. 

14. Unselfish appreciation of persons is the mainspring of knowledge and 

morality also, though both are specifically distinct from art ; 

15. it unifies our higher life both on its subjective and its objective side ; 

and is a strong vital experience. 

III. The Separateness of Art 

16. Art is separate from morality and knowledge formally 

17. and materially, (a) as a subjective experience, 

18. (b) in regard to the objects for which it is felt, which are persons. 

19. The separateness of art is obscured by the transference of artistic terms 

and forms to what is outside art. 

20. Knowledge and morality are in like manner separate. 

21. It is not a vicious circle to define art as the appreciation of art in others. 

22. The separateness of our higher interests may be transcended. 



1 An abridgement of an earlier draft of this essay is printed in the Proceedings 
of the Aristotelian Society, N.S. vol. i. 

288 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 289 

IV. Artistic Valuation 

23. The questions connected with artistic valuation are (a) what is valued, 

(b) by whom, (if) for whom, (d) on what ground, (e) with what authority. 

24. (a) What is valued is the work as manifesting consciousness, which must 

be of the artistic kind. 

25. (b) It is the artist, primarily, who values ; secondarily, the critic. 

26. (c) It is the artist, primarily, for whom the work has value ; but it is 

essential that he should wish others to enjoy it. 

27. (d) The ground of the valuation is an immediate personal experience. 

28. This is intuitionism, but the intuition it affirms (a) is not merely intel- 

lectual, (/3) is connected with all the rest of our personal and social 
life, (y) is flexible ; 

29. and its method is empirical, though mere empiricism can never do 

justice to the personal affirmation in artistic judgments. 

30. (e) Not all erroneous artistic valuations have a definite principle to 

oppose to us ; 

3 1 . but the need of a superhuman authority to back the true valuation is felt 

(a) in combating decadents who deny the value of life, 

32. (£}) in fighting for artistic progress. 

33. I agree with popular opinion in affirming the right of private judgment ; 

34. disagree in denying the accessibility of an objective criterion. 



I. Scope and Method 

§ 1. THOUGH English literature is rich in writings on art 
— Ruskin alone would redeem us from poverty — we have 
not much that treats of it in a purely speculative way. 
Ruskin's glowing pages are full of artistic truths, truths of 
wide sweep and truths of finest detail ; but he never stood 
away and viewed the subject as a whole from a detached 
position. He gives us plenty of philosophic material, but 
no philosophy of art. 

The object of the present essay is to study artistic 
experience philosophically ; above all, to contribute to the 
knowledge of personality by considering in very general 
terms what it is and does in the sphere of art. Such an 
investigation is in any case worth making, and especially 
so if we believe that art is not only a function, but a 
characteristic function, of personality ; that is, a function 
parallel in its nature to the functions we call morality and 
knowledge. I think that careful study would convince us 
that art is not a by-path or anomalous province ; but 
that the human spirit exhibits the unity of its nature 
throughout its experiences, artistic, moral, and epistemonic. 

U 



290 HENRY STURT vi 

Granted this, the study of art must throw great light upon 
the other functions. Particularly in regard to ethics it is 
hardly too much to say that any one who is beset by 
false notions about art will never interpret moral 
experience truly. 

This is how, in the first instance, I would justify my 
title " Art and Personality." The results of the argument 
will justify it further. We shall see, firstly, that the 
supreme artistic interest, the mainspring of artistic cona- 
tion, is an affectionate admiration for human persons ; 
secondly that art illustrates both the solidarity and the 
separateness of the main elements of our personal life ; 
thirdly, that artistic value is, for us, entirely an affirmation 
of personal experience. Lastly, the title of the essay is 
meant to indicate the limitations of its scope, which 
neglects the social and historical sides of art. Another 
essay on " Art and Society " might well be written 
without overlapping the present one. And a glance of 
the chapter-headings of JDr. _Hjrn's excellent Origins of 
Art will show how wide a field of history I leave 
untouched. In art-philosophy, as in ethics, we can learn 
much by studying individuals as we meet them in daily 
life, abstracting temporarily from their historical ante- 
cedents and social medium. 

\ 2. Of the persons who may distinctively be termed 
artistic there are two classes, artists and connoisseurs. 
Which of the two shall we elect to study as the type 
of artistic experience ? I think undoubtedly the former. 
Here, at least, I have the support of Dr. Bosanquet, who 
argues that in such theorising we should take the attitude 
of " the mind of the maker." : Were we discussing 
science instead of art there would hardly be need of 
arguments to establish this point. What should we think 
of the theorist who took as his type of the scientific mind, 
not the explorer and creator, but the docile student ; or 
quoted as the typical philosopher, not Aristotle, but 
Simplicius ? In morals the point becomes so obvious that 
it needs an effort to realise the force of the parallel. 

1 " On the Nature of .Esthetic Emotion," in Mind for April, 1894, p. 155. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 291 

There the connoisseur is one who says " video meliora 
proboque " ; but such is not the man on whom we base 
our theory of virtue. 

We get the same result from introspection. That 
definite and weil-known experience which we call artistic 
comes to us more fully in making a work of our own than 
in contemplating another man's. It would be strange 
were the case otherwise. Through all the range of our 
life our feelings are keenest when we are actualising them. 
Aristotle was right with his ivepjela ea/xev — " it is in the 
exercise of our faculties that our existence lies." Keenly 
as we may feel in looking passively at a sunset, keenly as 
we may enjoy the sunset in the " Fighting T6meraire," 
we might be sure that if we painted the sunset we should 
have a feeling of the distinctively artistic kind far more 
rich and keen. 

Yet, in ordinary discussions, the standpoint assumed 
is almost always that of the receptive side ; and this 
accounts for nine-tenths of the mistakes in art-philosophy. 
One reason for assuming this standpoint is obvious. 
Connoisseurs are many and artists are few, and there 
is always a temptation to confuse the " average " with 
the " typical." But there is perhaps a more philosophical 
reason which we shall appreciate if we consider how the 
experience of the looker-on compares with that of the 
artist. The former is, so to speak, a creator at second- 
hand. Turner, in painting the Temeraire, had the 
creative experience at first-hand ; the intelligent admirer, 
on the suggestion of the picture, goes through part of 
what the painter felt. But, though the spectator's feeling 
is feebler, it is purer. He is not troubled, like the artist, 
by difficulties of technique. The popular preference for 
the spectator's standpoint is instructive, if it shows us 
that, to get to the essentials of art, we must think away 
the merely technical element in the artist's experience. 

The mention of technique leads on to a further 
definition of my standpoint. It will have been noticed 
that I have spoken more of the artist's mind than of the 
work which he produces. It is mental facts that will 



292 HENRY STURT vi 

mainly be kept in view in the following pages. The 
" art " which I propose to study in connection with 
personality is the direct expression of the consciousness 
of the artist. 

§ 3. Of course it is in his works principally that the 
artist's consciousness is revealed. But the observer must 
use all helps to get at the underlying consciousness. He 
must attend to what artists say about their work, and to 
what they like or dislike in others. And thus, for his 
investigations, no artists are so useful as those of whom 
he can get personal knowledge. If he does not under- 
stand the artists of his own day, the painters who paint 
familiar beauties, the poets who treat the current themes 
of vital interest, the musicians who interpret the emotions 
of contemporary society, we shall not get much help from 
artists of a different age and clime. 

Neglect of these considerations accounts largely for 
the unreality of so many cultured discussions on art. 
An anecdote will illustrate my meaning. Not long ago 
I heard a distinguished professor, who has never done 
anything manual in his life, begin an art discussion with 

the words " When I look at a Greek statue ." This 

little phrase approves by implication many errors that 
we should shun. " I look " implies the receptive attitude ; 
that point has been dealt with. " Greek " is our present 
concern. How can an Englishman expect to reach the 
truth about art by beginning with the artistic conscious- 
ness of Greeks twenty-five centuries away ? " Statue " 
is hardly less mistaken. Statuary is an art-form which 
does not appeal strongly to our age and country. So long 
as our climate and habits remain what they are, it will 
never emerge from its secondary position. The Greeks, 
on the other hand, were always practising naked in the 
palaestra. Their work shows that they cared as much 
for the figure as the face. But to Englishmen the face 
is nearly everything, except to the few who have studied 
from the nude, which my professor had certainly never 
done. So, instead of his conventional classicality, the 
professor should have said : " When an English sculptor 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 293 

models a face." Even then he was wrong in not 
beginning with the art he practised, literature. 



II. The Solidarity of the Higher Life 

§ 4. Of all the qualities that go to make a true artist, 
the most important is enthusiasm. The word itself has 
had a chequered history. We all know of the early- 
Victorian archbishop who addressed a band of outgoing 
missionaries with the words, "Above all, avoid enthusiasm." 
He was doubtless using the word in its older sense of 
that neurotic exaltation, so notorious in later days among 
American revivalists, 1 which is often the dangerous 
enemy of reason and morality. But the enthusiasm I 
mean is just that rational fervour which is essential to 
the most perfect forms of intellectual and moral 
experience. 

The repressing and ignoring of enthusiasm was the 
worst feature of the eighteenth century. Its recognition 
is the most hopeful sign for the century just begun. 
" Enthusiastic " is now almost a customary epithet for 
artists, like " gallant " for soldiers. Even the ordinary 
Britisher knows that without enthusiasm, or unselfish 
devotion to art for its own beauty, no artist, however 
skilful, can be noble ; and that with it the least skilful 
can never be contemptible. The man of skill and no 
devotion he despises as a manufacturer. 

Using, as I do, enthusiasm in quite a common sense, 
I have no fear that it will be seriously misunderstood. 
But it is worth while to make its meaning plainer by 
comparing it with some kindred terms. ' Admiration ' 
and ' unselfish appreciation ' do not express the active 
working fervour of the enthusiast. Admiration, more- 
over, is too much limited to our feeling for men ; it 
would hardly express our feeling for a cause. ' Devotion ' 
is nearly synonymous ; but it has religious or, at least, 
exalted associations which are not relevant to our 

1 Cf. B. Sidis, Psychology of Suggestion, chap, xxxiii. , entitled "American 
Mental Epidemics." 



294 HENRY STURT vi 

present meaning. But all these terms share with 
enthusiasm the connotation of a self-forgetful absorption 
in a pursuit which is valued, not because it brings 
pleasure or profit or renown, but because it is intrinsically 
precious and noble. 

The quality of enthusiasm belongs not to art only, but 
also to the other activities, knowledge and morality, which 
go with art to make up our higher life. The sphere of 
the higher life might in fact be described as that in which 
enthusiasm is possible. A cool propriety, a cool curiosity 
never sufficed to make a saint or scientific genius. Art, 
knowledge, and morality have each of them intrinsic value, 
a value which, as we shall see in the last section of this 
essay, is vouched for, primarily, by the affirmation of the 
personal self. Enthusiasm is the affirmation of intrinsic 
values on its passionate side. 

§ 5. We have so far, by an unreal though necessary 
abstraction, considered enthusiasm subjectively, or as an 
affection of the acting self. None the less, it is essential 
to enthusiasm that it should be directed upon an object 
outside the acting self. It is possible, indeed frequent, 
for a man to view himself with pride, but not with 
enthusiasm. In morals a man cannot turn from thinking 
admiringly of another's virtue to thinking of his own with 
the same admiration. The transition from the not-self to 
the self involves an essential change of feeling. So it is 
with the artistic form of enthusiasm. Art is the effort 
to represent objects which the artist thinks beautiful, or, 
at least, deserving of sympathetic interest. But they 
must be objects which are not merely part of the agent's 
own self. This would probably be admitted as a rule, 
but there are cases on the boundary which might cause 
difficulty. In literature there is the case of autobiography. 
Can a man relate his own adventures and delineate his 
own character with the same artistic spirit that he can 
devote to another man's ? I think not. An autobiography 
may be excellent as a historical record or as a human 
document, like Benvenuto Cellini's ; but it is a mistake 
for the writer to try to make it a work of art, except in 



VI ART AND PERSONALITY 295 

the subordinate sense of taking pains with the arrangement 
and style. Compare Thackeray's Barry Lyndon with a 
book which perhaps suggested to him the idea of a 
romance of scoundrelism, Casanova's Memoirs. One is 
art, the other egoism. 

In painting there is the similar case of the artist who 
paints his own portrait. Here an objective attitude is 
less difficult because the matter represented is not so 
central to the acting self. It is possible for a man to be 
interested in his physical appearance, not because it is his, 
but because it is human. Still, there are many dangers 
in self-portraiture. In Florence there is a famous gallery 
reserved for portraits of artists by their own hands ; and 
the most successful are those in which the artists have 
looked at their own faces in a detached impersonal way 
as interesting human lineaments, not unsuggestive of 
human peculiarities and failings. 

§ 6. To learn what are the objects of artistic interest 
we must go to the arts ; and, to begin with, not to the 
most rudimentary, but to the most perfect of them. This, 
men have agreed, is poetry. For there is most in it on 
the whole, and to excel requires the highest powers. We 
have only to take down from our shelves any of the great 
poets, from Homer to Tennyson, to assure ourselves that 
their supreme interest is Man. Turn over their pages 
and you will find that human strength and beauty, love 
and hope, pain and sorrow, effort and adventure, art and 
skill are the substance of their song. In the preface to 
Sordello Browning says, " My stress lay on the incidents 
in the development of a soul ; little else is worth study." 
On the whole, that is true. 

A sympathetic interest in men is the mainspring even 
of that rare and difficult form, the poetry of pessimism. 
Pure pessimism, which is the same as pure misanthropy, 
is seldom met with and is artistically worthless. The 
only sort that is tolerable gives the impression that man 
is a creature possessing many noble qualities, but basely 
tormented by cruel circumstance. 

So with the satirist. Juvenal and Swift would be 



296 HENRY STURT vi 

execrable if we did not feel that their fury against men 
is really a fury that men are not better. It is a cry for 
reform cloked as a curse. 

Nature, animate and inanimate, claims the poet's 
interest in a less degree. In many cases, he cares for 
it only as a background to human life. Where Nature 
is an object of independent interest it is viewed, as it 
were, sub specie humanitatis. Even in the nature that 
is farthest from us, the poet sees human powers and 
attributes ; grace in flowers, majesty in mountains, purity 
in air and sky. 

§ 7. There are some branches of art in which my 
thesis that artistic interest is interest in psychic life, 
human or quasi -human, may be sustained with com- 
parative ease. These are poetry, portrait -painting, and 
portrait -sculpture. They may therefore be left aside, 
and we will turn to other cases where, for various reasons, 
the principle is less obvious. Such a case is architecture, 
the interest of which I will try to analyse in detail. It is 
a case where we are forced to take the spectator's stand- 
point rather than the artist's. For there is usually a good 
deal more artistic interest in a noble building than its 
builder put there. 

A considerable piece of architecture, one of our 
cathedrals for example, stands midway between the 
things of artistic value that are purely natural and those 
which, like a painting, are purely artificial. We never 
forget that human hands built it ; and yet from its huge 
bulk, its assimilation by weathering to the visible quality 
of rock and cliff, and the dependence of its structural 
permanency on the crude natural strength and weight 
of stone and timber, it takes a place in our thought 
among the main features of its landscape. Thus its 
interest has many sides, which it is worth while to 
distinguish for the sake of showing how they are related 
to humanity. 

First, there is the interest of human association. 
English people are worshipping in the building ; great and 
good men of the past have served and worshipped there. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 297 

Secondly, there is the interest of workmanship. The 
architect and sculptor have put their thought into its 
planning and decoration. These two interests are directly 
personal. 

Thirdly, there is the interest of nationality. The 
building informs us not only of the craftsman's conscious- 
ness, but of the nation's. The religious and secular 
ideals of medieval England, its hopes and fears, its view 
of Nature and of Man, its outlook upon the time and its 
conceptions of a future life were expressed more 
adequately in churches than in any other form. 

Fourthly, there is the interest of organic character. 
Let us consider what we mean by that hard -worked 
philosophic term " organism." In part we only mean 
that the thing denoted has life, whatever the qualities 
of life may be. This meaning, obviously, is not in 
question here. But also we mean that the thing 
possesses a definite meaning and purpose which pervades 
the parts, so that they are instrumental or " organic " to 
it. The more thorough the pervasion of the meaning, 
and the more elaborately the parts are shaped to express 
it, the more organic the organism. To us the human 
body, the instrument of personal life, is the supreme 
organism, because the meaning which it subserves is to 
us supreme. And thus we tend to view as quasi-personal 
every totality which subserves meaning in a way 
analogous to the human body. So it is with the 
cathedral ; and with every building that has a worthy 
meaning. Every material structure which is an object 
of our unselfish interest, we tend to regard as possessing 
an almost human individuality. That is why the sailor 
speaks of his ship as " she." That also is why we often 
resent alterations in a favourite building which a stranger 
would recognise as improvements. 

Fifthly, there is the interest of the vitality of the 
parts. To a sympathetic vision the stones and beams 
of the cathedral are severally instinct with life. The 
strong straight pillars sustain the upper fabric with an air 
of well-girt purpose ; the arches spring ; the timbers knit 



298 HENRY STURT vi 

the roof ; the buttresses thrust sturdily against the 
pressure of the roof; the spire soars into the sky. The 
eye instinctively interprets these dead mechanic things 
in terms of living power ; and those forms are grateful 
to it which assist its instinctive interpretation. 1 

The foregoing enumeration of aspects may not be 
exhaustive. That is immaterial. Distinction of the 
aspects of the artistic interest is less important than 
apprehension of its unifying principle, which is interest 
in a vital whole. The fourth and fifth aspects, which 
imply each other, are the fundamental ones. The two 
first are but enhancements. They cannot be mechanically 
added to the core of interest, but must belong organically. 
Take the first — association. The fact that Napoleon had 
worshipped, or professed to worship, in a building could 
lend it but an adventitious interest. To enhance its 
artistic value, we should need the memory of some 
God-fearing warrior, like Cromwell. 

§ 8. I have now to establish my position in regard 
to nature-painting, including under that term the painting 
of animals, still-life, and landscape. In regard to the first 
of these, the matter needs little argument. It is easy 
to see that what we value in the representation of 
animals are excellences akin to human. The danger is 
that we fall into the opposite error and suppose that we 
care for animals, not as beasts, but as men in beasts' 
clothing. Landseer illustrates both the better and the 
worse possibilities of the animal -painter. Sometimes 
his dogs are mere human caricatures. His best picture, 
the Shepherds Chief Mourner, exemplifies the two con- 
ditions of success. It is full of the purest appreciation 
of dog-nature as such ; and it teaches us how to admire 
in beasts a virtue akin to the highest in man. 

Still -life and landscape go very closely together, so 
that nearly all that applies to the latter applies to the 
former. As landscape is far the more important, I reserve 
the main argument for it. There is only one element 

1 Cf. the excellent analysis of the artistic quality of a Doric column by T. 
Lipps, Raumasthetik, chaps, i. and ii. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 299 

which is more prominent in still-life. In the minute 
study of flowers and leaves, for example, we have an 
overpowering impression of looking into the work of an 
artificer of the subtlest taste and inexhaustible resource 
and skill. This is not the wire-drawn fancy of an 
abstract thinker, but what occurs to the mind of the 
straightforward sympathetic observer — " even Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." An 
equal impression of subtlety and power is got from the 
lines and tints of scenery, such as that of mountains. 
But there the sense of contact with an artificing conscious- 
ness is weaker ; because, while man with stone and 
metal can imitate the lily, mountains are beyond him. 

Finally, then, of landscape, which has a claim to 
fuller notice as having only reached maturity in our own 
time. It is evident that no simple explanation of it 
will suffice. A taste of ours that was weak in the 
contemporaries of Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson must be 
part of our latest gain in subtlety and power. 

To put it broadly, the modern taste for landscape- 
painting is based on sympathy with the life of Nature, 
the same sympathy which drives many a traveller to 
roam through strange and lonely places of the earth. 
Here is a passage from that type of the wandering 
nature-lover, George Kingsley, which is an example how 
some men feel about islands and forests. " No landscape 
seems perfect to my eyes unless they can see therein 
a bit of the blue water — therefore I love an island. I 
love the sigh and the sough of the wind in the black pine 
forests of Germany ; I love the swish of the Northern 
birch-trees in the fresh odorous early morning, when the 
gale has just gone by, and the wet is sweeping in little 
glittering showers off their lissom branches ; I love the 
creak and groan and roar of the great oaks in a storm ; 
and I love the lazy whispering murmur of the light green 
limes in the lazy golden summer afternoon ; but, above 
all the sounds of Nature, I love the voices of the sea, for 
they speak to me in more varied tones, and I know that 
they tell me more, though I know not what they tell me, 



300 HENRY STURT vi 

than the voices of a million sibilant leaves — therefore 
I love an island." 1 What the landscapist does is to 
translate this sort of feeling into visual form. 

Though this is the foundation of landscape -interest, 
the influence of association is not small. Both the 
main interest and this auxiliary have been magnificently 
set forth by Ruskin. " Among the hours of his life to 
which the writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as 
having been marked by more than ordinary fulness of 
joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some 
years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses 
of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above 
the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot 
which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, 
of the Alps, where there is a sense of a great power 
beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep 
and majestic concord in the rise of the long, low lines of 
piny hills ; the first utterance of those mighty mountain 
symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly 
broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their 
strength is as yet restrained, and the far-reaching ridges 
of pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long 
and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from 
some far-off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness 
pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces 
and the stern expression of the central ranges are alike 
withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of 
ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splintered 
heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forests ; no 
pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and change- 
ful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, 
the clear green streams wind along their well-known 
beds ; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed 
pines, there spring up, year by year, such company of 
joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the 
blessings of the earth. It was springtime, too ; and 
all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love ; 
there was room enough for all, but they crushed their 

1 Notes on Sport and Travel, p. 60. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 301 

leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be 
nearer each other. There was the wood-anemone, star 
after star, closing every now and then into nebulae ; and 
there was the oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal pro- 
cessions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts 
in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy 
snow, and touched with ivy on the edges — ivy as light 
and lovely as the vine ; and, ever and anon, a blue gush 
of violets, and cowslip bells in sunny places ; and in 
the more open ground, the vetch and comfrey, and 
mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala 
Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or two, 
all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, 
amber-coloured moss. I came out presently on the edge 
of the ravine : the solemn murmur of its waters rose 
suddenly from beneath, mixed with the singing of the 
thrushes among the pine boughs ; and, on the opposite 
side of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey 
cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off 
their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and 
with the shadows of the pines flickering upon his plumage 
from above ; but with a fall of a hundred fathoms under 
his breast, and the curling pools of the green river gliding 
and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam globes 
moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to 
conceive a scene less dependent upon any other interest 
than that of its own secluded and serious beauty ; but 
the writer well remembers the sudden blankness and 
chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in 
order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impres- 
siveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some 
aboriginal forest of the New Continent. The flowers 
in an instant lost their light ; the river its music ; x the 
hills became oppressively desolate ; a heaviness in the 
boughs of the darkened forest showed how much ot 
their former power had been dependent upon a life which 
was not theirs, how much of the glory of the imperishable, 
or continually renewed, creation is reflected from things 

1 Yet not all their light, nor all its music, as Ruskin admits in a note. 



3 02 HENRY STURT vi 

more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing. 
Those ever- springing flowers, and ever-flowing streams 
had been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, 
valour, and virtue ; and the crests of the sable hills that 
rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, 
because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron 
wall of Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson." 1 

After George Kingsley and Ruskin it is perhaps 
superfluous to labour my main point further. I will take 
these extracts as proving that the nature-lover does not 
think of nature as merely material, but loves it as 
possessing a quasi-personal life. 

§ 9. Music could hardly be discussed adequately till 
after the consideration of the rival theory that art is the 
expression of emotion, a theory which finds its strongest 
illustrations in music. But the general application of 
my view in regard to music may be indicated now. 

We have in music to make a distinction which has 
not been necessary in the other arts, that between 
interpretation and composition. Each musical perform- 
ance is, like an actor's interpretation of his part, a sort 
of re-creation by the performer. It is here that most 
of the enthusiasm of music is found, and here that it is 
most directly intelligible. For to make a great musical 
work live again in sound with all its wealth of human 
feeling and ingenuity, is a task to stimulate interest to 
the highest. But what we are mainly concerned with, 
according to our standpoint, is the mind of the composer, 
and we must determine in what sense the composer can 
be said to be moved by interest in personal life. 

According to general agreement, music is the most 
spontaneous of the arts. A tune springs up within the 
composer's mind, he cannot tell why or how. He cannot 
usually say more than that it " comes to him." But if 
music remained on this level of mere spontaneous 
expression, we should never get anything more significant 
artistically than thoughtless whistling. There must be 
added serious effort and application. Part of the effort 

1 Seven Lamps of Architecture, p. 162. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 303 

may be due to any of the lower motives which induce 
men to exert themselves. But part of it, I venture to 
say, comes from enthusiasm for that beautiful world of 
sound which is man's mysterious and delightful heritage ; 
and a still greater part from interest in the varieties of 
emotional thought which music is fitted to convey. 

How the emotional thought in good music may be 
interpreted, is to be learnt from the analyses which are 
common in musical literature. Good examples are 
Spitta's analyses of the Wohltemperiertes Clavier in his 
Life of Bach, and Wagner's appreciations of Beethoven 
in his Art-Work of the Future. By these eminent writers 
the sentiment of Bach's and Beethoven's music is 
interpreted in a great, almost heroic, way. But I will 
content myself with a simple illustration. Most amateurs 
know Heine's cycle of songs called Dichterliebe, set to 
music by Schumann. The first song, " Im wunderschonen 
Monat Mai," is a beautiful expression of happy love ; a 
later song, " Ich grolle nicht," a magnificent expression of 
a jilted lover's fury and despair. Now, there is no reason 
to think that Schumann was actually convulsed by these 
rapturous or bitter emotions when he was writing the 
songs, any more than if he had treated the incidents by 
painting. But there can be no doubt that he was 
strongly interested in them. Man was to him worthy 
of deeply sympathetic study, and his emotions, bright or 
sombre, well worth the utmost effort of the musician to 
enshrine in melody. 

§ 10. The narrow limits of an essay will not permit 
the review even of the more important of the rival 
theories of the essential nature of artistic interest. But 
there are two at least which should be noticed, partly 
for their intrinsic importance, partly because the discussion 
of them will throw fresh light upon the position just laid 
down. The first of these theories, or classes of theory, 
connects art with emotion ; the second with pleasure. 

It is true, of course, that art implies emotion ; every 
vital action does so in more or less degree, and art more 
than most. For, firstly, art is not the main business of 



304 HENRY STURT vi 

life, but, like play, an indulgence out of our superfluity. 
And therefore we are not fully fitted to produce or enjoy 
art save when pleasurable emotion raises the tide of vital 
feeling above its normal force. Secondly, the object 
of artistic representation must awaken in us some kind 
of emotion, bright or sombre. Otherwise it would be 
one of those neutral uninteresting things which no one 
cares to put into art. This we may call the present 
emotional interest of the artistic object. And, thirdly, 
the object has usually a remembered emotional interest. 
The poet who writes drinking songs is usually one who has 
had immediate personal acquaintance with the pleasures 
of wine. It is generally admitted that a wide practical 
experience of life is a necessary part of the equipment of 
the literary artist. But all this is far from justifying what 
is perhaps the dominant theory of art just now, that art 
is definable as the expression of emotion. 

One form of the theory, a coarse, uncritical form, may 
be termed the Byronic fallacy. This fallacy assumes that 
any one who is full of turbid feeling about himself is, so 
far, qualified to be some sort of artist ; by preference, a 
poet. One could hardly maintain that Byron himself held 
this view, even at the epoch when he began to write Childe 
Harold ; but it seems to have been current in the early 
Victorian period among a certain class of his admirers. 
" Demetrius Wiggle, sir, is the slave of passion," says the 
friend of a Byronesque young man -about -town in one 
of Thackeray's books. But, in reality, to feel deeply 
miserable and discontented, to be in a turmoil of love 
or hate or ambition, is, so far as these feelings are self- 
regarding mental disturbances, not a help, but a hindrance 
to poetry. 

§11. Dr. Bosanquet's emotive theory of art 1 is of 
course much more refined and philosophic than the 
foregoing. At first, we must admit, there does not seem 
to be much difference. He says : " I suggest as the 
most fundamental and universal feature, from which all 
the common characteristics of aesthetic emotion may be 

1 " On the Nature of ^Esthetic Emotion " already quoted. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 305 

deduced, the simple fact that it is expressed." Surely, 
we must object, this is far too sweeping. At this rate, 
Achilles expressing emotion by sulking in his tent or 
dragging Hector by the heels was an artist. And indeed 
we find presently that the object through which the 
emotion is expressed is very important ; this object 
must be "a presentation more or less individual." Dr„ 
Bosanquet adopts, as expressing his own view, Aristotle's 
analysis of tragedy, interpreted by Lessing and Bernays. 
" There is a form of art called Tragedy which produces 
pleasure by means of two painful emotions, pity and 
fear. How this is possible is a problem that answers 
itself when we consider the conditions of artistic expres- 
sion or representation. By a typical portrayal of human 
life in some story that forms an individual whole, the 
feelings in question are divested of their personal reference, 
and acquire a content drawn from what is serious and 
noteworthy in humanity, and thus alone, it seems clearly 
to be Aristotle's view, can their quintessence be fully 
uttered and drawn out and find its pleasurable discharge 
free from morbid elements of mere shock and personal 
sensibility. The connection of pity and fear, which is the 
centre of his doctrine, really indicates that fear, for art, 
is a fear idealised by expression or objective embodiment, 
while free utterance is not aided but lamed and obstructed 
by any intrusion of the dumb shock of personal terror. 
Thus then, and thus alone, can fear be made an aesthetic 
emotion, a source of artistic enjoyment or the pleasure 
of tragedy. It is not, and this is a fundamental point, 
it is not merely that the emotion is 'refined,' in the 
sense that its bodily resonance is rendered less intense. 
A modified resonance will attend a modified emotion, 
but the intensity of feeling is not a question of principle 
in relation to its aesthetic character. The aesthetic 
character lies in the dwelling on and drawing out the 
feeling, in its fullest reference, by help of a definite 
presentation which accents its nature." 

My judgment on Dr. Bosanquet's doctrine as a whole 
is that, starting from a principle which is quite wrong, it 

x 



3 o6 HENRY STURT vi 

works round to a view which is nearly right; his approxi- 
mation to truth consisting in his growing recognition of 
the importance of objective interest. But let me clear 
up the difference between us by considering a particular 
tragedy, Richard II, for example. In spite of what 
he said earlier in his essay, when combating the hedonist 
theory of art, as to the necessity of assuming the attitude 
of the " mind of the maker," it is clear that in his account 
of tragedy he assumes the attitude of the spectator. If 
then, he seems to say, we met Richard II. in the flesh, 
discrowned and miserable, we should feel an immediate 
shock of painful emotion which would not be art. When 
awakened, however, by the dignified scenic representation 
of the hapless king these emotions become artistic. 

Against this I would urge that as a preliminary we 
must assume the attitude of the tragic artist ; for the 
feeling of the spectator is only that of the artist at 
second-hand. Then we shall see, I think, that what 
Shakespeare was interested in, was not the emotions 
of pity and fear, but the man Richard II. as delineated 
by the Chronicle and vivified and ennobled by his own 
poetic imagination. His artistic effort consisted in the 
construction of a drama to exhibit the action of the king 
under pathetic circumstances. The pity and fear of 
the tragic artist and the spectators are secondary to their 
interest in the persons of the play. Dr. Bosanquet holds 
that the object is important because of the emotions ; 
the truth is rather that the emotions are important 
because of the object. 

The argument of those who hold an emotive theory 
of art is strongest in music. There the current opinion 
is that the be-all and end-all of the process is the genera- 
tion of a succession of emotions. This may approximate 
to the truth as regards the hearer, but not as regards the 
composer. And how fallacious it is as regards the per- 
former may be known by watching good musicians. In- 
terested they are, but not emotionally upset, either about 
the content of the music or about their own concerns. I 
once read an absurd remark that the piano-playing of a 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 307 

young girl full of feeling is more artistically satisfying 
than that of a more skilful middle-aged performer. This 
is the Byronic fallacy again. The playing of young people 
is generally cold. They are full of feeling, but it is feeling 
about themselves, the sort that has no immediate value 
for art. The elder performer is much more likely to play 
warmly because the years have trained him in sympathy. 

In the other arts I am on ground which is plainly 
much stronger. If we watch a good painter working at a 
portrait we do not see that he is labouring under strong 
emotion ; we are astonished at his technical mastery and 
insight into character. The nearer we get to the mere 
expression of emotion, as in the antics of boys who have 
been promised a holiday, the further we get from art. 

§ 12. Pleasure, like emotion, is obviously connected 
very closely with art. Art is not a means of self- or race- 
preservation, at least in its modern form, whatever anthro- 
pologists may tell us of its origin. It would therefore not 
be pursued unless it brought pleasure on the whole. But 
when this is admitted we are very far from admitting that 
art is definable as a kind of pleasure-seeking. Such a 
definition would miss out the characteristic feature of the 
thing defined. Nor would it be true in many individual 
cases. For if we interrogated an artist of the higher class 
on the subject we should probably find that, though he 
valued his art as infinitely precious, he did not regard it as 
an unmixed source of pleasure. In particular, the early 
struggles of a serious artist are generally somewhat 
distressing both to the sufferer and his near relations. 
There is an intense interest in the artistic object, with a 
constant failure to embody it in adequate artistic repre- 
sentation, resulting in painful fluctuations of spirits and 
temper. Hence the sympathy of the St. Ives fisherwife 
for the students painting on the foreshore : " What a pity 
them poor artises do get so set on it." 

Some years ago the hedonist theory of art would have 
needed a formal refutation. But it is not held now with 
the same tenacity, except by those who insist on solving 
all philosophical problems by a reference to biology. No 



308 HENRY STURT vi 

biological philosopher ever begins an analysis of human 
experience at a higher point than the mammalia. Mr. 
Herbert Spencer indeed starts his Data of Ethics with 
remarks on infusoria and mollusca. Conformably to this 
tendency, what we may term the Bauble-Theory connects 
human art with the taste of bower-birds in decorating their 
nests with scraps of bright colour, and with the gratification 
of the pea-hen in the magnificence of her spouse's tail. 
Coming down to man the bauble - theory puts the 
beginning of art in the sensuous pleasure which primitive 
man feels in bright colours, simple harmonies and allitera- 
tive or rhyming jingles of words. The truth is that such 
sensuously pleasant things cannot be more than the 
material or vehicle of art ; its essence cannot lie in them. 
Grant Allen's Physiological ^Esthetics, excellent so far as 
it goes, does not really touch the central matter of art at 
all. It would be equally possible to write a Physiological 
Ethics or Physiological Theory of Knowledge which should 
circle round among the external conditions of morality 
and knowledge without telling us anything about their 
inner reality. 

The gist of the matter comes to light when we 
consider that only some pleasant objects are suitable for 
art, those namely that we can enjoy consistently with 
an unselfish interest in their permanence and welfare. 
Things that we can only enjoy in a self-regarding way, 
such as food, can with difficulty be treated artistically. 
A picture of the most sumptuously spread dinner-table 
would not be admissible as fine art. The Dutch kitchen- 
pictures of fruit, vegetables, and game, those of Mieris 
for example, though painted with an unselfish interest 
in the forms and colours of the objects, suffer decidedly 
from their material associations. It is the pleasures of 
sight and hearing that are specially artistic because they 
can be enjoyed consistently with self-detached interest 
in the object for its own sake, and are not diminished 
by being shared with others. Selfish pleasure is the 
death of art. 

It may have been noticed that I have so far not used 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 309 

the current term " aesthetic " in regard to art-experience. 
As a synonym for " artistic " I think it highly objection- 
able, because it suggests the reduction of the appreciation 
of beauty to a form of perception. But it may be 
usefully employed to describe those sensations and 
pleasures which, in virtue of their refined quality, are 
capable of being used for art. If we use aesthetic in this 
sense we ought to note that no experience, however 
aesthetically refined, rises to the level of art unless it 
contains the element of objective interest. I have read 
of some character in fiction who invented a scent-organ, 
consisting of rows of bottles filled with various scents, 
and a mechanical arrangement like a key -board for 
opening the stoppers. Was the pleasure got from this 
instrument artistic ? Probably not. We cannot of 
course be certain that to a man of exceptional disposition 
scents may not suggest as much objective content as 
musical sounds to other people. But if not, his 
experience is merely aesthetic. The scent of a rose has 
great artistic value because it enhances an artistic interest 
which is already there. Without the flower, the perfume 
avails nothing for art. 

§ 13. Both the emotive and the hedonist theories of 
art are supported by a tendency which has had a baleful 
influence on speculation, far outside the sphere of art- 
philosophy — the tendency of subjective idealism. The 
two theories have their common point in the ignoring 
of the object and the endeavour to seek the source of 
the art-interest entirely within the subject. The same 
tendency in another form is countenanced by Hegel 
when he raises the question, " What is man's need to 
produce works of art?" 1 and answers that it is self- 
reduplication. As a thinking consciousness, man, says 
Hegel, " draws out of himself and makes explicit for 
himself that which he is." " Man as mind reduplicates 
himself." " He has the impulse ... to produce himself, 
and therein at the same time to recognise himself. This 
purpose he achieves by the modification of external things 

1 Introduction to Philosophy of Fine Art, trans, by Bosanquet, p/57. 



310 HENRY STURT vi 

upon which he impresses the seal of his inner being, and 
then finds repeated in them his own characteristics. Man 
does this in order as a free subject to strip the outer 
world of its stubborn foreignness, and to enjoy in the 
shape and fashion of things a mere external reality of 
himself." " The universal need for expression in art lies, 
therefore, in man's rational impulse to exalt the inner 
and outer world into a spiritual consciousness for himself, 
as an object in which he recognises his own self." And 
this process is termed a " reduplication of himself." 
Professed interpreters of Hegel may question what part 
self-reduplication plays in his art-theory as a whole ; but 
the foregoing extracts from the Introduction are enough 
to bring home to him at least a subjective -idealising 
tendency, a tendency which cannot fail to lead astray. 
Man needs art because it is a form of objective interest 
which is essential to his higher life. The objects are 
akin to himself ; but they are not himself, nor does he 
try to make them so. 

Had Hegel's expressions not been worded so as to 
exclude the objective interest of art (as they apparently 
do), we might have taken them as merely emphasising 
its subjective side which is no less essential than the 
objective. For though art is not self-reduplication, it 
might fairly be described as self-expression. The artist's 
work is always his work ; the appreciation which it 
embodies is his appreciation. When the artist has his 
completed work, the poem or the picture, before him, he 
sees that it embodies not only the beauty which interested 
him to make the work, but also his interest in the beauty. 
Hegel's preoccupation with the subjective element must 
not drive us into exclusive preoccupation with the 
objective. 

§ 14. The admiring appreciation of personal life, which 
is the mainspring of art, is the mainspring of knowledge 
and morality also. There is not room here to justify the 
parallelism in detail ; but it is important to forestall the 
notion that art is an anomalous province of our life. Of 
both knowledge and morality it may be said that they are 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 311 

unselfishly enthusiastic, and that the objects of their 
enthusiasm are persons, or things with personal qualities. 

The value of enthusiasm in knowledge-seeking is 
tolerably well seen now. No one can fail to acknowledge 
it who remembers that knowing is, primarily, a creative 
process. This last point, truly, is often overlooked. 
When knowledge is thought of as a cut-and-dried system 
stored in literary warehouses the man of knowledge is 
identified with the book-worm. But we should rather 
think of the student as an ardent creator ; a maker, not a 
manipulator, of theories. Knowledge must be dis- 
tinguished from erudition. 

Another distinction will vindicate the unselfish character 
of knowledge. Many things which people need to know 
cannot be dignified by that lofty term, the fluctuations of 
the tallow-market for example. Knowledge must be 
distinguished from information. A vast mass of 
materially useful information about food and clothing and 
travelling and so on is only learnt by people because it is 
useful, and is forgotten as soon as it becomes useless. 
We shall have later (in § 24) to make a similar distinction 
between art and manufacture. What really deserves the 
name of knowledge is a content which is worth knowing 
for itself; a content which fascinates our interest because 
of the intellectual force which it embodies. 

What the objects are which excite the enthusiasm of 
knowledge may be ascertained by the rough-and-ready 
method of taking down a volume of the Encyclopedia 
Britannica and turning over the leaves. You will find that 
the greater part of it, and the most interesting part of it, 
deals with mankind's proper study, man. The natural 
sciences, which are falsely supposed to be more " scientific " 
than the human, are apparently, but only apparently, an 
exception. For the universal or generic judgment of 
science should be interpreted teleologically, i.e. as 
expressing purpose or system in its content. And 
purpose and system are conceptions which are fully 
intelligible only in reference to the conduct of personal 
agents. The interpretation of personal conduct is really 



312 HENRY STURT vi 

the most characteristic form of knowlege. In nature we 
are interested from a two-fold motive. Where it is alive 
it has a claim on us merely from its vitality. Bits of life 
are always interesting to a living mind. To the mature 
intellect it is interesting because we trace in it subtle far- 
reaching design. 

On the essential part which the enthusiasm of 
humanity plays in moral experience I must be even 
briefer ; the more so as I hope to deal with the matter 
some day in another place. Perhaps it is enough now to 
appeal to the consensus of Christian moralists, who, using 
the term charity, make this enthusiasm the basis of 
all virtue. 

All this must not be understood to mean that art is 
identical with, or merely another form of, knowledge and 
morality. There is, as just explained, a generic kinship 
between them ; but, beyond that, there is a specific 
difference which is irreducible and also indefinable. They 
are three distinct ways of appreciating our fellow-men. 
Taken together, they may be said to constitute our 
Higher Life. 

§ 15. Unselfish appreciation of men, which in its 
stronger form is enthusiasm, is thus the quality which gives 
to our higher pursuits a common generic character. But, 
more than that, it is the interfusion of the same quality 
which gives to objects the capacity of being interesting. 
For it is certain that interesting objects have a definite 
common quality. Enthusiasm does not operate in vacuo, 
or attach itself to any object at random. People often 
speak as if it did ; but this presupposes an unreal 
detachment of the subject from its object, parallel, it may 
be remarked, to that liberum arbitrium indifferentice which 
so grievously caricatures the true freedom of the will. 
Enthusiasm is only felt for appropriate objects. 

If we study the persons for whom we feel it reasonable 
to be enthusiastic, we shall see that they are themselves 
persons of enthusiasm. Fundamentally, enthusiasm is 
what differentiates the man from the Yahoo. The student 
of our Saxon Heptarchy, who has never read beyond 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 313 

Milton's history, will think disgustedly of those troubled 
times as " the righting of kites and crows," because he can 
see nothing in them but endless jarring selfishness ; to 
the modern historian they are interesting, because he 
recognises in them the " Making of England," the seed- 
time of a noble culture. 

In regard to objects below the human level a good 
deal was said to the present purpose when it was proved 
that their artistically interesting qualities are personal, or 
at least, vital. It is only necessary to carry the same 
line of argument a step farther. Let us raise the question, 
What is it that makes living creatures valuable ? Our 
modern sense of the value of life is certainly not primitive, V- 
Uncultured men destroy life with no compunction on the 
slightest grounds. What is at the bottom, not only of 
modern humanitarianism, but also of that interest in living 
forms, which moves the great throng of naturalists ? I 
cannot see that the mere fact of animation gives much 
claim. If a creature has no beauty or intricacy of plan, 
or is not closely connected with higher creatures, it is 
nothing. As a fact, perhaps no form of life fulfils these 
conditions of exclusion. But some come so near it that 
not one man in a hundred thousand takes interest in 
them. Compare, for example, the popularity of birds 
with the neglect of spiders, and you will find an example 
of my principle. Birds are not enthusiasts ; but they 
look as if an enthusiast had made them. We enjoy their 
beauty like children charmed by a picture and careless of *" 
the painter. 

A characteristic of art and of its allied experiences 
which might be deduced from what has been already said 
is its strength of vital feeling. It would be a plain 
contradiction to think of enthusiasm as languid and 
decadent ; and the same is true of its objects. The 
higher life is strong and the objects of its interest are full 
of strong life. Men, beasts and plants, mountains and 
streams, clouds and air must, in order that the artist 
may love them, be full of such life as is allowed them. 
Beauty is a kind of high vitality ; ugliness belongs to 



314 HENRY STURT vi 

death, decay, and disease, or the disorder that leads to 
them. 



III. The Separateness of Art 

§ 16. So far we have been considering facts which 
show the ' altogetherness ' of the elements of the higher 
life ; we come now to facts which show their separateness. 
Not that the facts are inconsistent or that we are reduced 
to an ' antinomy.' I only mean that while at some times 
and in some respects we feel a unity conjoining art, 
knowledge, and morality, otherwise we feel that they are 
separate from each other. 

The separateness has in the first place what may be 
called a formal or outward aspect. Art is a discontinuous 
interest both in our experiencing of it and also in regard 
to the objects of the interest. The former kind of dis- 
continuity is too generally recognised to require proof. 
Art lies outside the vital needs of our existence and 
therefore must always be an episode. In regard to the 
object also the artistic interest is episodic in a way that 
morality and knowledge can never be. True moral 
interest, such as admiration for a noble action, implies a 
reference to the character of the doer of the action, in 
other words, a reference to a system that is both continuous 
and extensive. True epistemonic interest is not an interest 
in detached facts, but in facts which bear on some big 
system, preferably that supreme, enveloping system 
which we call reality. We cannot pick up a piece of 
knowledge or of moral interest and then drop it and have 
done with it. This, however, is the case in art. A painter 
sees a pretty child in the street, gets it for a model, 
paints it with all his might, sells the picture and, possibly, 
never thinks of the child again, save in that isolated 
regard. 

In the products of art both the subjective and the 
objective discontinuity are exemplified. The picture 
embodies a mood of the artist ; and also an aspect of the 
model. Both mood and aspect are, as it were, snap- 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 315 

shotted in one self-justifying presentation. Hence the 
self-containedness of the artistic product. Every one 
knows that the good picture need not be in the least 
useful, or teach a moral lesson, or be strictly veracious. 
But its independence within its own sphere needs 
emphasising too. We do not very greatly care if we 
cannot harmonise the various plays of Shakespeare, we do 
not care, that is, if the consistency of characters which appear 
in more than one play be not maintained ; or if different 
plays exhibit inconsistent views of life on the poet's part. 
It is true that this self-containedness is not absolute. 
We should get more pleasure from the whole series of 
Shakespeare's plays if we could view them, not merely as 
detached efforts, but as the expression of a continuously 
developing poetic genius. But in the main the single 
poem, picture, or symphony stands alone. Its main 
interest lies within its four corners. It shines by its own 
light ; not borrowing much light, or reflecting it. 

It would have been possible, had not the empirical 
proof seemed more solid, to have appealed earlier in this 
essay (in 8 6) to the discontinuity of the artistic interest in 
aid of my thesis that its object must be humanity. A con- 
tinuous interest might be thought to be interesting from its 
continuity alone. It might be argued that the claim of 
geometry does lie in the fact that it is an immense 
complex system which the most diligent explorer can 
never exhaust ; and an attempt (though I think a 
fallacious attempt) might be made in this way to show 
that we can be enthusiastic without being enthusiastic 
over man. But take away this element of continuity and 
by what can we explain the claim of art but by its 
embodiment of human nature ? Where else can this 
perennial fount of unselfish interest be supposed to lie ? 

§17. But this formal characteristic of discontinuity 
does not give the essential difference of art from its kindred 
pursuits. That difference really consists in the felt quality 
of the artistic experience and in the quality of the objects 
for which it is felt. Art, knowledge, and morality are 
different ways of feeling appreciation for our fellowmen. 



316 HENRY STURT vi 

Art is a kind of felt experience whose quality is definite, 
irreducible, and indefinable. In support of this, an appeal 
can only be made to self-observation. Let us suppose 
ourselves interested in some great and good man, Cardinal 
Newman, for example. Then our interest may be either 
moral, and move us to exhibit our admiration in conduct ; 
or it may be epistemonic and move us to explore his 
character with a scientific curiosity ; or it may be artistic 
and move us to paint his portrait or make him the hero 
of a poem or tale. My argument is that, in the main, we 
should have a different kind of experience in each case. 

The chief objection to this would come from those who 
take a view of art which seems to me to be quite mistaken. 
Put shortly, this view is that the artistic attitude is to say 
" How fine ! " and do nothing. It is easy to see how this 
notion arises. In the first place artistic experience is 
supposed to be typified, not by the artist, but by the 
non- performing connoisseur. This is a common and 
excusable error. But then, by a fatal and easy extension, 
any sort of non-performing admirer is credited with an 
artistic experience, and the video -meliora-proboque 
debauchee is said to look at morality in an ' artistic ' way. 
This is not art but morality-and-water ; a barren velleity 
towards virtue. 

§ 1 8. On the objective side, the separateness comes 
out very plainly. Defining excellent persons as those 
who have strong unselfish appreciations, we may say that 
the artist's main interest is in excellent persons. But 
it is also true that not all excellent persons interest him 
to an equal degree. The artistic sort are more interesting 
than the other two. 

This point may be brought out in a concrete form by 
asking : What kind of face is the painter most attracted 
by ? This may sound a hopelessly vague question ; but 
we must try to think of the typical artist in his most 
characteristic moods. In all such fluctuating matters 
one may discover a centre of gravity, so to speak. 
Allowing, then, for varieties of mood and idiosyncrasy 
I think it true to say that the most interesting sort 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 317 

of face to paint is that of an artistic person ; not 
necessarily that of an artist, but of some one with 
strong artistic appreciations. The faces of men notable 
for other excellences have interest too ; but not so much. 
Moreover, it is rare to find the other excellences, when 
they reach any considerable pitch, entirely disjoined from 
the artistic. Certainly it is not prettiness which makes 
a face paintable. The portraits in the Royal Academy 
which we gaze at are those of persons full of character, 
statesmen, warriors, philanthropists, men of science, 
literature, and art. The ladies who are mere beauties 
we pass with an indulgent smile. 

The same fact comes home to us more strikingly from 
the negative side. There are people of our acquaintance 
neither stupid nor morally objectionable who impress us 
as alien to art. Their faces, figures, and dresses offer no 
material for painting ; their conversation and way of 
life have no suggestions for poetry or romance. Their 
houses are oppressive with commonplace ; and an artist 
would find it very hard to work in them. Now, if we 
consider why these people are not artistically interesting 
we shall find it is because they are themselves not 
interested in art. They do not really care for romantic 
fiction, or poetry, or pictures, or noble music. They 
may recite or clatter on the piano ; but it is all super- 
ficial. Their houses may contain fine furniture, or even 
costly china locked up in glass cabinets ; but there are 
none of those personal touches which show that the 
owners have a genuine sensibility to the beautiful. 

We need not delay long over considering the separate- 
ness in regard to things. Most interesting things attract 
us both from an epistemonic and an artistic point of view. 
Flowers, for instance, are attractive both to the painter 
and the morphological botanist, though for quite different 
reasons. But we do not always get this combination. 
Few things are more interesting to the understanding 
than the inner histology of the human frame ; nothing 
is more hopelessly impossible for purposes of art. The 
subjective ground of this objective quality lies in the 



318 HENRY STURT vi 

fact that the human inside is a thing which we could 
neither synthesise nor analyse with the distinctive artistic 
experience. 

§ 19. We may now touch on some causes which 
hinder the general recognition of the separateness of 
the artistic experience. One of them is that mis- 
conception of the artistic attitude as the attitude of 
the non- performing admiration, which was mentioned 
recently. 

Another cause, trivial-seeming yet powerful, is language 
— the application of artistic terms to non-artistic things. 
It is common to hear men speak of a pretty checkmate 
or a beautiful operation in surgery. (" ' Lovely sight 
if Slasher does it,' remarked Mr. Bob Sawyer.") But 
such things are not really beautiful in the sense that 
a picture is beautiful. The good checkmate or good 
operation are doubtless, owing to their neatness and 
effectiveness, as satisfying in their own way as the 
good picture ; but the satisfaction is not of the same 
kind. People who overlook this will talk of the artistic 
satisfaction to be got from checkmates and operations. 
But the use of the artistic word has no more real 
appropriateness than the common cook's term "beautiful" 
to describe a nice pudding. 

Another cause is the transference of art-forms to the 
service of interests which are not only external to art 
but external to the higher life altogether. Some of these 
interests are base, and then we feel that the forms are 
degraded in a painful way. Usually the interests are 
well enough in their own sphere. As examples may be 
cited many of the popular pictures of war or hunting. 
Such pictures may possess artistic merit. But often 
there is no more art in them than in a photograph of a 
prize-fight. 

The case is rather different where art-forms are used 
for moral or epistemonic purposes. This is not infrequent 
in modern days; there are examples in Browning. Much 
of the interest of The Ring and the Book is ethical or 
psychological rather than artistic. To say this implies 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 319 

no complaint against Browning. Any great thinker has 
a right to give his message in any form he finds most 
convenient. It is our own fault if the boundaries of art 
are confused in our minds thereby. * The same trans- 
ference of form is seen in painting. For example may 
be mentioned a recent Academy picture of Mr. Gow's, 
The Great Nile Dam at Assouan, which shows us a piece 
of the half- finished wall, railway trucks laden with 
Portland cement, some natives mixing mortar, the 
eminent English contractor under an umbrella standing 
with a little group round an engineer who traces plans 
with a walking-stick in the sand. All most interesting ; 
but not art in the same sense that Mr. Watts' pictures 
are art. 

And finally, there is the fact that the separateness 
is not absolute. In art there is always some admixture 
of knowledge and morals ; and in the highest art a great 
deal. We shall have to consider this further by 
and by. 

8 20. We find the same separateness in the case of 
knowledge. To the man of knowledge what is mainly 
interesting is the minds and experience of intellectual 
men ; or, to speak more precisely, of men in general on 
their distinctively intellectual side. For, whereas art is 
somewhat aside from the main business of life, knowledge 
is diffused through the whole of it. In this connection 
I mean by the man of knowledge not only the profes- 
sional scientist who, like Sir Isaac Newton, lives to 
explore and think ; but also the man of intellectual 
power who, throughout the conduct of his life, shows 
an unselfish love of intellectual construction and com- 
prehension. 

So also with morality. The interest of the virtuous 
man is centred in virtuous men. It is true that other 
excellences of character awake in us something of the 
same sort of admiration as moral goodness, 1 but in a 
much inferior degree. There are phrases current which 
might lead one to suppose that the greatest saints think 

1 Cf. my article entitled "Duty" in International Journal of 'Ethics for April, 1897. 



320 HENRY STURT vi 

less of virtuous men than of sinners. This is not so. 
Sinners are interesting in so far as they are not hopeless, 
but still have the makings of good men. Once they are 
finally judged and relegated to hell, no one imagines that 
the saints care anything about them. 

§ 21. I must now meet an objection which has 
perhaps been in the reader's mind some time, since I 
said (in § 15) that the proper objects of enthusiasm are 
enthusiastic people. The objection will be that I have 
made each man's artistic, intellectual, and moral qualities 
to depend on his appreciation of the same qualities in 
others, and that thus a vicious circle is made. The 
answer is that the circle is only apparent. In each case 
the quality has a substantive existence in the mind of 
its possessor. A has certain definite mental contents 
which we call art or knowledge or moral goodness ; they 
are not less definite and real, and not less his own because 
he could not have them without knowing B, C, D and 
others who possess the like. We may illustrate from the 
case of love. A loves B ; and the chief quality which 
makes B lovable is that he is of a loving disposition, 
manifested in particular towards A. And so from B's 
point of view. The two loves are mutually dependent ; 
but the relation of mutual dependence does not destroy 
their several reality. 

All this would have an important bearing on the 
social aspect of art and the rest of the higher life, if that 
were the matter of our discussion. Society is not merely 
the field in which we exercise the qualities of the higher 
life ; the qualities themselves are essentially social. And 
thus we see how mistaken it would be to try, as 
Henry Sidgwick once did, 1 to determine the Ultimate 
Good by considering what a man would choose who 
found himself solitary in a universe. 

§ 22. I said just now (in § 19) that the separation 
between the departments of our higher life is not absolute. 
In the first place they are connected at the root. If we 
cast our thoughts over any of our artistic actions we see 

1 Methods of Ethics, ist ed. p. 374. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 321 

that in them we exercise not only the special artistic 
faculty, but also a kind of consciousness which, if not 
moral, is at least akin to morality ; and moreover a kind 
of intelligence which if not identical with knowledge is, at 
least, akin to it. 1 

But, notwithstanding this basic connection, each of 
these interests in its ordinary definite form is mainly 
concerned with itself. If we try to combine two of them, 
we run the risk of spoiling both. To enter upon an 
artistic task in a spirit of moral zeal generally impairs the 
artistic result. To quote an obvious example, novels with 
a moral purpose are generally bad fiction without being 
good sermons. And so with an attempted combination 
of art and knowledge. Any one who has tried to write 
philosophy with much attention to style knows how 
carefully the style-interest must be kept subordinate. 
Otherwise phrase-making will get the upper hand and 
truth succumb. And yet we can imagine this natural 
limitation transcended. We can imagine, perhaps on rare 
occasions meet with, objects which engage all our higher 
interests at once ; we can imagine occasions when we 
could put forth all our higher faculties in harmonious 
co-operation. The possibility of such a transcendence 
helps to prevent that recognition of the usual separateness 
of the higher interests which it is the object of this 
section of my essay to demonstrate. 

IV. Artistic Valuation 

§ 23. We come now to the questions connected with 
artistic valuation. I wish to draw out the full philosophic 
import of the judgment that a given work of art has 
artistic value. Five main questions at least may be 
raised : (a) What is it exactly that is pronounced 
valuable? Is it the work merely? Or is it the work as 
the expression of a consciousness ? (b) By whom is the 

1 For this reason I coined in § i a new term ' epistemonic ' as the adjective 
of knowledge ; since there is an element in both art and morals which might be 
called ' cognitive ' or ' intellectual. ' 



322 HENRY STURT vi 

judgment pronounced ? To whom are we to look for the 
judgment? And whose judgment is the most trust- 
worthy? (c) For whom is the work valuable? A thing of 
value which is valuable for no one in particular is of course 
a false abstraction. The valuable thing must be felt as 
valuable for some one; and for some one more than for others. 
We have to ask : For whom ? (d) The judger who pro- 
nounces the work valuable must have a standing-ground for 
his judgment. The ascertainment of this ground is the 
most important point of the whole inquiry into value. 
(e) What authority has our judgment of value? On 
what do we rely in meeting those who reject it in theory 
or oppose it in practice ? What guarantee have we of the 
permanence of the judgment ? 

These are the main questions about value, and we 
shall find that the answers must all be made from the 
personal point of view. 

It is to be noted that I am only propounding 
philosophic questions about artistic value as opposed to 
others which might be called professional. If a painting- 
master were asked by a pupil why he thought a picture 
good he would probably specify various merits of 
technique or composition. He would be quite right from 
his own point of view. But these professional matters 
are external to that inner reality with which we are 
concerned now. 

§ 24. (a) One frequently hears it said that a cardinal 
difference between a moral act and a work of art is that 
the former has no value apart from the fact that it 
manifests the character of the doer, whereas in the latter 
the doer's character is indifferent. As we have seen 
(in § 16) there are facts which lend colour to this 
statement. But, in the main, it is false. An effect of 
colour or music which is the outcome of chance is never 
the same to us as one which is the work of human 
thought. What we should value in the work of art is 
the consciousness of the artist manifested therein. If we 
fail in doing this we fail in the duties of the critic. 
Perhaps these duties in their fulness are too onerous for 



vj ART AND PERSONALITY 323 

human nature. We cannot usually trouble about the 
consciousness of the tailor who makes our coat (though 
the higher political economy tells us that we should), and 
we do not usually trouble about the consciousness of the 
painter of the average pictures on the walls of the Royal 
Academy. But it is only the limitation of our knowledge 
and the dulness of our sympathy and imagination which 
keep us from feeling the artist's personality behind 
his work. 

The consciousness which the work manifests must be 
of the distinctively artistic kind. That means in the first 
place that it must be vivid, free, creative. Here we have 
the mark to distinguish art from manufacture. The 
manufacturer is not a creator but a copier, a reproducer 
of the thoughts of others, or of his own when they have 
got stale. He works up to a standard externally 
prescribed, and lives upon a lower and colder plane of 
consciousness. Here the parallel is close between art and 
morals. Mechanical conformity is death to both. It is 
the chief artistic danger of modern society with its vast 
swamping industrial organisations, that crafts tend to be 
carried on less and less in the true artistic spirit. 

In the second place, to say that the consciousness 
must be distinctively artistic means that it is not to be 
confused with the kindred experiences of knowledge and 
morality, or to be valued because of moral and epistemonic 
elements in it. The arguments of the previous section of 
this essay were intended to obviate the possibility of such 
a confusion. Each experience has its own quality and 
its value lies in the perfection of the quality. The 
interests of art, knowledge and morality are autotelic 
interests. What the quality of art is, cannot be defined, 
though it may be indicated by description. It is an 
irreducible fact at which definition stops. All we can 
say of it is that it is a distinct mode of appreciating 
men. 

In this relative independence of art we find the meaning 
of that much-abused shibboleth " Art for art's sake." 
Some who could not or did not want to understand how 



3 2 4 HENRY STURT vi 

art is akin to the other higher interests have talked as 
though an artist were all the better for being a reprobate 
and a dunce. That heresy is far from extinct, though it 
does not enjoy the favour of a dozen years ago. 

§25. (b) Now, who is to say when the work of art 
embodies vivid consciousness of the true artistic kind ? 
Obviously, there is no one who has such an opportunity 
of knowing as the artist himself. The case is the same 
as in morals. No one is in such a position as the agent 
to tell the spirit of his action, if he would only do so. 

There are, however, well-known causes which impair 
our confidence in the artist's judgment of his own work. 
For one, there is personal vanity. The artist feels vaguely 
that he must have produced a great work, because he is 
sure that he is a great man. Another cause is pre- 
occupation with technique. There are many effects, not 
very important in themselves, which the artist is apt to 
prize because they are difficult to accomplish. This is 
particularly common in music and painting. In times of 
decadence this secondary technical interest is sometimes 
all that survives. For these reasons we are perhaps more 
inclined to rely on the judgment of the artist, not at the 
time of his doing the work, but when he looks back on it 
after a lapse of time. His consciousness is clearer then. 
But we must also remember that it is feebler, and that 
new prejudices may arise to obscure old truth. 

So far as the critic is worthy of attention on a question 
of value, he must take the position of an artist-at-second- 
hand, i.e. he must by an exercise of sympathetic 
imagination go through the creative process of the artist's 
consciousness. The insight of any critic is limited ; 
though there are people of little creative force who have 
the power of re-creation in an extraordinary degree. But 
we trust it because of its comparative immunity from 
personal prepossessions. Still more do we trust the 
verdict of many critics, succeeding each other through 
ages. This is our nearest approach to infallibility. The 
ground of our confidence is not merely the number of the 
voices, but rather our conviction of the organic unity of 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 325 

human nature. The contemporaries of Sophocles judged 
the Antigone beautiful for reasons organically connected 
with Greek life ; and successive generations have ratified 
their verdict. We now regard it as true for all ages 
because the long consensus of opinion shows that the play 
appeals to sentiments which are not merely Greek but 
fundamentally human ; and we are sure that the founda- 
tions of human nature will not change. 

§26. (c) A valuable experience is, of course, valuable 
for some person. Primarily, the person for whom art is 
valuable is the artist himself. If any one asked : For 
whom was Shakespeare's artistic life a good ? the answer 
would be : In the first place, for Shakespeare. And this 
is not an exceptional rule for exceptional men, but merely 
the common rule for the valuation of human life. We 
cannot say of the rank and file of humanity that A's life 
is valuable because it furthers the lives of B, C, and D, and 
so on. Nor can we say it of the chiefs. 

But to this a necessary supplement must be made. 
It is essential to the artist's character as a lover of men 
that he should feel such an interest in human life as is 
inconsistent with the selfishness of keeping his creative 
gift to himself. He must at least intend that his work 
shall be enjoyed by society. Apart from this, the saying 
" Art for the artist " might be misunderstood in a sense 
contrary to the whole tenor of my argument. In 
Huysmans' novel A Rebours the hero shuts himself 
hermetically from all contact with the world, and lives 
entirely for the enjoyment of his aesthetic feelings. That 
is just the sort of life I do not regard as typically artistic. 
Artistic experience with its outcome of performance is 
good for the artist in the same way that a saintly life is 
good for the saint. It is the expression of an enthusiasm 
whose blessedness it is to spend and be spent in the 
following of a high ideal. 

" Art for the artist " should reconcile us to those 
apparently painful cases where artistic work is lost without 
contributing commensurately to the common enjoyment. 
The case is more frequent still in morals. How often does 



326 HENRY STURT vi 

moral effort fall unheeded to the ground ! And yet it 
was good for the doer that he did it. 

§27. (d) We come now to the most important question 
of all : On what ground does the judger stand when he 
judges a work of art excellent ? Here we touch upon 
the ultimate basis of artistic value, indeed of all value 
whatever. The answer is that he stands upon the ground 
of immediate personal experience ; he judges the work 
excellent because he feels or intuitively perceives it to be 
excellent. 

Our previous discussions have shown that this affirma- 
tion may be analysed further. Let us make the analysis 
by representing to ourselves a concrete case of such a 
judgment. Of course it must be an artist judging his 
own finished work. Now the work has value because of 
the human character embodied therein ; character, as we 
have seen, primarily of the artistic kind. This human 
character in the work belongs partly to his object, partly 
comes from himself. If this sound obscure, let us make 
the example still more definite. Let the artist be a painter 
and his work a portrait. Then the human character seen 
in the painting by the painter is partly that of his model ; 
and partly it is his own ; for the portrait is his work, his 
interpretation. The portrait in fact has an objective and 
a subjective side. Both sides are known to be excellent 
by immediate experience. But, for the subjective, feeling 
is the more appropriate term ; and for the objective, 
intuition. When the artist was doing his best to paint 
that portrait he felt that his action was excellent or noble 
or valuable. And he recognised by intuitioti the excellence 
of the character revealed in the model's face. The ground 
of our judgment of moral value is the same. We ask : 
Why did you judge it good to nurse your friend through 
his fever ? and the agent will answer : I knew by feeling or 
intuition that it was good. On analysis we shall find that 
this judgment involves both a recognition of the excellence 
of the agent's friend, and also a recognition of the goodness 
of his own purpose in tending the sick man. Beyond 
this point analysis cannot take us. I have only to add the 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 327 

caution that the objective and the subjective sides, separable 
in abstract statement, are not separable in reality. You 
cannot appreciate without appreciating somebody ; and 
conversely (if the tautology may be forgiven) you cannot 
appreciate somebody without feeling appreciation. That 
is only one more example of the essential subjective- 
objective two-sidedness of our conscious life. 

§28. It will be evident to the reader that the fore- 
going account of the basis of artistic valuation is a form 
of intuitionism. But there are, I venture to think, 
advantages in this particular form which are not shared 
by others. 

(a) Intuitions, in general, are commonly described too 
much in intellectual terms. This is specially noticeable 
of moral intuitions. According to the common account, 
a man does an act and his conscience, supervening, tells 
him it is right. He sees another do it, and his intuitive 
faculty is similarly on hand to give him information. 
In opposition to this I would urge that there is no such 
separateness in the judging faculty. A nurses his friend 
B through typhus. He has a feeling that it is good to 
do so, a feeling impelling him to the action. When, 
in the accepted phrase, his conscience tells him he is 
right, that is only his feeling-experience become self- 
conscious and articulate. So with the objective side of 
the action. It is A's love for B that causes A to face 
danger on B's behalf. The intuitive faculty does not 
thereupon step in from outside and pronounce that B 
is lovable. A's intuition is simply his love for B come 
to self-consciousness. I have taken the examples from 
morals rather than from art because ethical intuitionism 
is the more developed. But the account of the matter 
would be on parallel lines if A were painting B's portrait 
instead of nursing him. Another way of putting the 
matter would be to say that the artistic intuition is a 
function of the whole self, rather than a separate faculty 
in the self. 

(/3) This leads on to the next point in which my 
view of the artistic intuition may claim an advantage, 



328 HENRY STURT V1 

i.e. that art is not left in isolation, but is brought into 
the vital system of the individual and of society. Nothing 
is more unsatisfactory from a logical point of view, than 
an intuition which comes from no one knows where and 
issues orders no one knows why. Now we cannot in the 
strict sense explain the origin of the artistic intuition any 
more than the origin of any other primary function of 
our nature. But if, as I believe, civilisation is mainly 
founded on those kinds of unselfish human interest 
which we call knowledge and morality, it is easily 
intelligible that we should have a parallel interest, which 
we call art, closely akin and lending powerful support 
to the other two. It is intelligible, too, that moral 
goodness, intellectual power, high vitality, and strength 
should be approved by the intuition. For these are 
prime elements of welfare in the individual and the 
social system. They are conditions and consequences 
at least, if nothing more, of an artistic disposition. 

(7) There is, on my view, no difficulty in explaining 
the variations of the intuition in different men, different 
epochs, different societies. A lack of flexibility is the 
most notorious fault of the common intuitionism. But let 
the basis of art be an interest in men, and then, plainly, 
artists will appreciate those forms of human excellence 
which actually come before them. " But," it will be 
asked, " is there not now too much flexibility ? Have 
you not in making your intuition so flexible, destroyed 
its unity ? " My answer is that there is unity in the 
intuition so long as there is substantial unity on the 
subjective or feeling side of it, and substantial unity in 
the objects which it approves of. Suppose that we come 
upon a strange artist who is producing work which he 
affirms to be art. The work may not be quite like any 
other work in the world, but it is art so long as he feels in 
doing it as true artists feel, and so long as his object 
is akin to the objects that true artists admire. 

% 29. But though I believe in intuitionism I do not 
believe in the intuitional method as commonly understood. 
We know Bentham's amusing account of that method as 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 329 

applied to morals. " The various systems that have been 
formed concerning the standard of right and wrong may 
all be reduced to the principle of sympathy and antipathy. 
One account may serve for all of them. They consist 
all of them in so many contrivances for avoiding the 
obligation of appealing to any external standard, and for 
prevailing upon the reader to accept of the author's 
sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself. The phrases 
different, but the principle the same. It is curious 
enough to observe the variety of inventions men have 
hit upon, and the variety of phrases they have brought 
forward, in order to conceal from the world and, if possible, 
from themselves, this very general and therefore very 
pardonable self-sufficiency. One man says he has a 
thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and 
what is wrong, and that it is called a moral sense ; and 
then he goes to work at his ease, and says such a thing 
is right, and such a thing is wrong — why ? ' because my 
moral sense tells me it is.' Another man comes and 
alters the phrase, leaving out moral and putting in 
common in the room of it," 1 and so on. There is a 
strong element of caricature in this witty diatribe of 
Bentham's ; but he is right in his main point, that a 
purely introspective attempt to determine the content 
of an intuition runs the risk of consecrating what merely 
favours our private advantage or prejudice. There is 
nothing to be gained by tying oneself down to the intro- 
spective method. If an intuition is generally diffused 
among men we can ascertain it by studying their conduct. 
If human enthusiasm be the true motive of art, then a 
study of artists will disclose the fact. In any case, this 
is the standpoint adopted in the present essay — in- 
tuitionism with the method of empiricism. 

But we should be quite ignoring the distinctive 
character of artistic experience if we thought we could 
ascertain what is right in art by mere statistical inquiry. 
We should be neglecting the personal affirmation of 
value implicit in every genuine artistic judgment. This 

1 Introduction to tht Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. ii. 



330 HENRY STURT vi 

may be illustrated by contrasting with art a kind of 
judgment in which no value is involved. Let the 
judgment in question be one concerning fashion in 
dress. " Crinolines are becoming fashionable again," 
says an eminent modiste, and we assent or dissent on 
purely statistical grounds. " Crinolines are beautiful." 
This we cannot accept or deny without a much deeper 
affirmation. 

§30. {e) We come now to the last of the questions 
connected with artistic valuation, its authority. We 
saw that the valuation is made by a personal affirmation. 
When we meet with people who reject our valuation, 
is it merely one ipse dixit against another? Having 
regard to the amount of Bad Taste around us, one 
might expect that we should have to combat a large 
number of recalcitrants. But we shall see that this 
is not the case when we come to analyse the matter. 
What is comprehensively called bad taste might in 
many cases be more appropriately termed rudimentary 
taste. We cannot blame a savage for preferring the 
music of the tom-tom to that of the piano. The latter 
instrument has simply not come within his artistic range. 
And on most points of art a great number, perhaps 
the majority, of our friends are in an analogous position. 
The stigma of bad taste should only be fixed on those 
who choose the worse when they might easily have chosen 
the better. As causes of ordinary bad taste we may 
enumerate Fossilism, that is, a stupid adherence to 
artistic forms that may have been very well in their day, 
but should now be abandoned for others more adequate ; 
Vulgarity, which leads us to prefer forms conducive to 
self-glorification ; Crankiness, or the undue insistence on 
some element which has only a subordinate value. None 
of these kinds of bad taste has any special philosophical 
significance. Their valuation is at bottom the standard 
valuation stunted or distorted. They have no strength 
of conviction, no principle to oppose to us. 

§ 31. The case is different with the Decadent. It 
is true that he proffers no positive principle ; but he is 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 331 

great in his denials. We believe in life ; he disbelieves 
in it, despises it. If we traced this disbelief to its source, 
we should find that it arises from want of affection for 
his fellow-men. 

From this decay of the root of interest in him we 
may deduce the characteristics of the decadent. In 
art he is, according to a well-known and well-approved 
definition, a worker who thinks more of the parts than 
of the whole. As some one has said of Mr. Swinburne, 
he cares not for life but for style. In criticism, where 
he abounds, he is a seeker after subtlety, an amateur 
of filigree, a worshipper of la nuance. To him the 
dexterity of the word-artist, who captures a just-perceptible 
meaning floating on the boundary of thought, is more 
precious than the first-hand statement of a fundamental 
truth. Superficially, decadence is the comminution 
of values. 

But there is a deeper meaning in him. Let us see 
if we can trace it in a concrete example. The following 
may be quoted as a typical decadent appreciation of litera- 
ture : * — "He was indifferent or contemptuous towards 
the writers of the Latin Augustan age ; Virgil seemed 
to him thin and mechanical, Horace a detestable clown ; 
the fat redundancy of Cicero and the dry constipation of 
Csesar alike disgusted him ; Sallust, Livy, Juvenal, even 
Tacitus and Plautus, though for these he had words of 
praise, seemed to him for the most part merely the 
delights of pseudo- literary readers." After some slight 
commending of Lucan and high admiration of Petronius, 
the appreciation goes on : " But the special odour which 
the Christians had by the fourth century imparted to 
decomposing pagan Latin was delightful to him in 
such authors as Commodian of Gaza, 2 whose tawny, 
sombre, and tortuous style he even preferred to Claudian's 
sonorous blasts, in which the trumpet of paganism was 
last heard in the world. He was also able to maintain 
interest in Prudentius, Sedulius and a host of unknown 

1 Havelock Ellis, Affirmations, p. 181. 
2 A writer of relisrious acrostics. 



332 HENRY STURT vi 

Christians who combined Catholic fervour with a Latinity 
which had become, as it were, completely putrid, leaving 
but a few shreds of torn flesh for the Christians to 
' marinate in the brine of their new tongue.' " 

In such a statement of literary preferences, to which 
any number of parallels might be found, we may discern 
that, if it were possible for the decadent to have a 
substantive principle, it would be the Excellence of Death. 
The praise of death with its allied phenomena of suicide, 
pessimism, and the glorification of sin is always prominent 
in decadence. 1 No writer can literally and seriously 
affirm the excellence of death, any more than he can 
affirm the excellence of silence ; but the decadent, moth- 
like, is always fluttering round it. 

In the present age, when conditions on the whole are 
favourable to the higher life, the decadent's contempt for 
life is not formidable. Natural selection is always refuting 
him. But we should feel him sorely at a time when the 
struggle was all up-hill, as in the centuries when the 
ancient civilisation was decaying. The decadent may be 
inconsistent and despicable, but we cannot afford to 
pass him with a sneer. To oppose him effectually we 
must be convinced that there is a supra-mundane authority 
behind our private affirmation, behind the consensus of 
society and the brute force of evolution. We must be 
convinced that our artistic affirmation harmonises with the 
spirit of the universe. 

| 32. The same feeling is felt much more strongly 
and with more need on occasions when men are struggling 
for artistic reform. Artistic reform consists in a fresh 
burst of enthusiasm for man and nature prompted by the 
perception of valuable elements of life and character 
hitherto overlooked, or blocked out from view by vicious 
tradition. A typical example is found in the English 
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. To call attention to new 
artistic truth means a militant revolt against the en- 
trenched representatives of the established order. This is 
no light matter, as the Pre-Raphaelites found ; though we 

1 See L. Proal, Le crime et le suicide passio?inels, p. 361 sqq. 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 333 

who enjoy the fruits of victory can seldom realise how 
serious such a struggle was to the men who fought in it. 
The ardour and perseverance to carry it through are not 
intelligible without the conviction which would be religious 
if it became articulate. In the struggle for moral progress 
it is keenly felt and loudly expressed. We can hardly 
conceive a moral reformer who did not say that God was 
on his side. The artistic reformer does not take that 
tone, because the matter is not enough to justify so 
tremendous an appeal. 

§ 33. It is necessary in conclusion to define the 
relation of my theory of valuation to two points on which 
popular opinion has expressed itself forcibly, the right of 
private judgment, and the accessibility of an objective 
criterion. On the first point I appear to harmonise with 
popular opinion ; on the second to disagree, though the 
disagreement is, I hope, superficial. 

Space is lacking to analyse fully the notion of private 
judgment ; but evidently the insistence on it is important 
mainly in questions of value. In the settlement of 
questions of fact, on the other hand, we have to rely 
largely on those who are better informed than ourselves ; 
nor are we any the worse for doing so. It is for liberty 
of judgment in matters of value, more especially of moral 
value, that Teutonic Europe has fought so passionately 
and stands so jealously on guard. What it is that is 
claimed in this sphere may again be easily misunderstood. 
It is not that each man claims to be his own infallible 
Pope. For the strongest upholder of private judgment 
will admit that it is constantly mistaken. The claim is 
that things which are declared to be valuable in the way of 
art, knowledge, or morality must be valued by the 
individual with his free personal affirmation. 

When we come to think of it, this is not a claim to 
make a judgment of value in one way rather than in 
another way ; the judgment of intrinsic value can only 
be made as a free personal affirmation, if it is to be made 
at all. For it is essential to that kind of judgment 
that it should be enthusiastic, and enthusiasm cannot be 



334 HENRY STURT vi 

felt vicariously. The phrase " liberty of conscience " really 
means " liberty to have a conscience," since a conscience 
fettered ceases to be a conscience. So in art. We 
cannot commission another to make our artistic judg- 
ment for us, however artistic he may be. To put the 
matter in an aphorism which will cover the whole range 
of intrinsic value : I can let another measure and weigh 
for me ; I cannot let him love for me. 

§ 34. The popular demand for an objective criterion is 
strong ; but it is not at all clear, and has led to the 
formulation of some impossible theories, such as that the 
artistically valuable may be ascertained by reference to 
Eternal Laws, or Types, of Beauty. It is hardly necessary 
to enter upon a refutation of these theories, which have no 
longer much scientific support. But it may be remarked 
(a) that they are inconsistent with the claim to private 
judgment ; (b) that no one can ever tell the world what 
these laws or types are ; they are blank forms, like Kant's 
categorical imperative ; (c) that even if the laws or 
types in their full content were laid before us, we could 
never determine artistic value by the mere process of 
comparing artistic works with them, as a tradesman 
compares his own yard-measure or pint-measure with 
the standard of the government inspector. Such 
a mechanical comparison would grossly misrepresent the 
genuine artistic judgment. 

And yet it is easy to see how the belief in an objective 
criterion has arisen. One source of it is the feeling, of 
which I have recently spoken, that good art has a 
superhuman backing. It is easy to step from this to the 
doctrine that you can determine by religion what good 
art is. This step is unwarrantable. For though we 
might say in Aristotelian phrase that, in the order of being, 
art is based on religion ; yet, in the order of our 
knowledge, religion is based on art and on the parallel 
functions of our personal life. 

Another source is the practical disciplinary need of 
having a recognised standard wherewith to put down 
offenders against artistic good sense. We see the same 



vi ART AND PERSONALITY 335 

thing in morals, where those in lawful authority cannot 
always be debating with anarchists on first principles. 
But this practical need must not make us forget that the 
recognised standard is but a systematisation of personal 
affirmations. We must not confuse it with the chimera 
of an objective criterion. 



VII 



THE FUTURE OF ETHICS: EFFORT OR 
ABSTENTION ? 



By F. W. Bussell 



i. Ethics as the borderland of Philosophy ; not properly within the domain 
of Pure Reason. 

2. Depends on prejudices, and deals with the singular and not the uniform. 

3. Yet it should be examined by Critical Philosophy although in all time 

Rational Ethics = Abstention. Ethical Law (unlike the Natural sphere) 
is only realised through voluntary effort of individuals. The Ethical 
agent (if he debates at all) makes a heroic wager. The final motive 
is " loyalty to a cause not yet won." 

4. Present state of Ethics in Europe, confronted with the certainties of 

Science : is there room for appeal ? Becomes despairing and senti- 
mental, or Quietistic. 

5. Ethics (in a wide sense, as the conduct of life according to a certain 

standard) proceeds on certain assumptions which are necessary before 
any practical maxim can be accepted. 

6. These assumptions are peculiar to European Ethics ; where the criterion 

is popular, and the emphasis is on the moral life and on ordinary duties. 
The Western aristocracy, as one of effort and endeavour, not of know- 
ledge or asceticism. 

7. How arises this conviction of the dignity of the Moral Life ? Not from 

the study of Nature, which contradicts it, but from the sense of the Value 
of the Individual; and from the certainty of Personal life, — our only sure 
experience, though beyond the reach of absolute proof. 

8. Ethics as a Realm of Faith. 

9. Necessary assumptions of the Ethical philosopher. 



II 

Ethical systems have been mainly negative. In Greece, tend to be 
anti-social ; where active, due to personal influences (Pythagoras and 
Socrates). 

Reflection fails to give any sufficient reason for the common behaviour of 
men, and to confirm their convictions or prejudice, in favour of the life 
11ft 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 337 

of striving. Quietism, and abstention due in a great measure to the 
Greek passion for Unity, in speculative matters. 

12. Undue emphasis in search for Unity upon Nature (where man has 

nothing to learn except maxims of prudence and experience), instead of 
upon History (Narcissus). Judaso-Christian ideal transforms Europe ; 
because interest centres on the individual soul ; and (in consequence, 
not in spite of this) devotion to a visible commonwealth arises. 

13. Abstention is the result of independent (or Naturalistic) Ethics, and the 

peculiar tone of European Ethics is due to various forces in the early 
centuries of our era. Ethics seeks to attain independence after the 
Reformation (mainly behind current practice, and with almost exclusive 
emphasis on self-interest). 

14. Problem of Disinterestedness is in forefront of Ethics ever since. 

15. Two divergent tendencies have marked nineteenth century; one to 

Quietism, viz. Science ; the other to Effort ; Benevolence and Social 
Reform, Decay of the Empire of abstractions. 

16. All modern movements aim at the immediate benefit of the individual 

(whatever form they seem to take), his freedom and his comfort. No 
serious fear of abandonment, of self-determination. Emphasis on 
Personal Relations. Individualism alone can lead to Collectivism. 

17. We fight to-day against a threatened return to Oriental monism in what- 

ever field. Le mysticisme c'est l'ennemi ; for it is fatal not merely to 
action, but in the end to thought itself. 



I 

§ i. This Essay endeavours to call attention to the 
somewhat anomalous position of ethical study in Europe. 
Two points especially seem worthy of note : (1) that Ethics, 
regarded in a broad sense as the ' science of conduct,' 
demands a larger basis of hypothesis than any other 
science ; and (2) that the ideal, whether of social work or 
self-realisation, whether the extreme of Altruism or 
Individualism, is denied both by the earlier and still 
powerful systems of the East, and by the most modern 
" reformers " of ethical theory in our own continent. 
From the confessed obligation of personal effort and 
of social service acknowledged alike by Christian and 
Positivist from a religious or a secular standpoint, a 
reaction threatens us, in which participate philosophic 
temperaments so different as Schopenhauer, Von Hart- 
mann, Renan, F. H. Bradley, Nietzsche, and last, but 
not least aggressive, Mr. A. E. Taylor. 1 And first, there 
are peculiar difficulties in the way of those who claim for 

1 Problem of Conduct, Macmillan, 1901. 
Z 



338 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

Ethics a secure place among the Sciences. Theology can 
no longer be termed, in the strict sense, scientific ; although 
the criticism of theologians may be conducted scientifically, 
and in scientific language. The mediaeval Schoolmen, 
rationalists at heart, following the Alexandrine lead and 
possibly mistaking it, endeavoured to lay down rules for the 
advance from the lower and precarious region of Faith to 
the certainty of Knowledge ; just as the Mystic, emotional 
and ecstatic though his aim, gravely enumerates the 
mile-stones which the traveller must pass on the road to 
perfection, and employs all the artifice of the intellect to 
silence the intellect itself. This reign of uniform (and 
regular) law prevailed in theologies both of formula and 
fruition ; and no sympathy was felt for the guilty impostor 
who ventured to approach and to appropriate the Summum 
Bonum by the hasty short-cut of an unauthenticated 
method. The Reformation put an end to this tiresome 
and exacting rigour ; and like the political development 
which ran parallel, it has issued in the freedom of the 
individual, solely accountable, in the matters of highest 
import, to the inner voice. We may note a similar 
disintegrating tendency in the purely moral sphere. We 
are all keenly alive to the distressing insecurity of the 
domain of Ethics. It is a debatable region or border- 
land of Philosophy. It may indeed be questioned if, in 
the strict sense, it is a province of Philosophy at all. So 
far as concerns the inquiry into past systems, the criticism 
of rival doctrines, the examination into empirical psych- 
ology, — it must assuredly be considered a legitimate 
department of the all-embracing Master-Science, which 
" deems nothing that is human foreign " to its survey. But 
from the practical side, Ethical treatises are dynamically 
ineffective ; while from the theoretical, they do not belong 
to the domain of pure Reason. Viewed as constructive, 
Ethics is heavily weighted with prejudice and prepossession, 
derived mainly from tradition and religious influence ; as 
historic or statistical, it may be impartial but can hardly 
be normative ; but as concerned now with the present 
condition and future prospect of individual and race, it 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 339 

must needs fall below the calm impassivity of a theoretic 
science. It seeks to impose what may be termed the 
categories of impulse, and sentiment upon an outer world, 
which seems to repudiate their sanction. It is not easily 
open to the reception of truth from without ; it seeks, 
hesitating and uncertain about its own data, to fix a 
precarious sphere of influence for them in a world, which 
if not actively malevolent and antagonistic is at least 
blind and unheeding. 1 

§ 2. Philosophy attempts to interpret the relations of 
the individual finite consciousness (or rather, that 
consciousness which "believes itself" to be individual, 
continuous, and finite) to an existent outer order, or to an 
outer order which is " believed to exist." To be without 
bias or scruple or prejudice in recording one's experience 
is to have a sound, wholesome, candid, and philosophic 
temper. In ethics this colourless receptivity is impossible. 
Pure Thought cannot be here supreme. In no other sphere 
of inquiry are the reason's axioms so plainly postulates, 
which it is bound to shield from profane inspection. In 
self-defence it takes shelter behind common instinct, 
emotion, and tradition. It is forced to appeal to a 
universal impulse or ' intuition,' and it confesses that 
the moral sanctions depend on a sentiment which is only 
cogent because it is everywhere found as a fact of uni- 
versal experience ; not because its arguments are intellec- 
tually irresistible. In all sciences, it is these early steps 
which are faltering and insecure ; but Ethics, in particular, 
owes everything to a set of initial assumptions and hypo- 
theses, which must to all time remain " matters of Faith." 
Yet these cannot (legitimately) be dethroned or reduced in 
number without weakening the whole fabric of convention 

1 Maeterlinck: " Kingdom of Matter" : Fortnightly Review, Oct. i goo. "We 
have learnt at last that the moral world is a world wherein man is alone ; a world, 
contained in ourselves that bears no relation to Matter, and exercises no influence 
on it, unless it be of the most hazardous and exceptional kind. But none the less 
real therefore is this world, or less infinite ! If words break down when they try- 
to tell of it, the reason is only that words are after all mere fragments of Matter, 
seeking to enter a sphere where Matter holds no dominion." — This is very French 
in tone and somewhat exaggerated, but it expresses well the sense of the chasm 
that cannot be bridged between 'is' and 'ought,' between Fact and Ideal, 
between pure Science and Faith. 



340 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

and society. Reason has always claimed to use the 
emotions, and to guide the passions ; but it has usually 
succeeded in controlling the latter only by expelling the 
former; and has settled down into that theoretical lethargy 
which refuses encounter with everyday life. The philo- 
sopher in the Thecetetus is sure that he can define ideal 
or typical man, but fails to distinguish his next-door 
neighbour. But in Ethics, truly conceived, what is of 
moment is not this typical character, the uniform or 
general law, but the singular, the special. Ethics must, if 
applied to practice in however slender a degree, be as 
empirical as character ; — built up from guesses and 
hazards, accommodated to a manifold variety of individual 
character and circumstance. No two situations are alike ; 
and it may be questioned whether wide sweeping dicta 
(such as Kant's maxim of Universality) are ever consciously 
applied to solve the problem in any given case. The day 
for the empty dignity of such utterances is past. Morality, 
still swaying under the blow dealt by a Calvinistic 
Naturalism, seeks to build up its shattered palace on the 
concrete, and refuses to be consoled by any poetic appeals 
or abstractions of a Justice, a Retribution, which is no 
longer actual, nor personified. Thrown back on its own 
inward experiences, the inquiring Soul finds no countenance 
in the natural order for its sympathetic scruples ; no aid 
in discredited authority. 

Reconstruction must be mainly empirical, and can 
never again become systematic. Any future scheme 
which claims to be comprehensive must be either merely 
casuistic (an attempt to drain an unfathomable ocean), 
or historic ; and this method, so far as the ultimate 
sanction of right and wrong is concerned, however 
instructive, is never frankly conclusive. In fine: (i) the 
moral agent can never be purely rational, but breathes 
an atmosphere clouded by passion, emotion, and hypo- 
thesis and illumined fitfully by the wandering flashes 
of the Ideal ; and (2) as dealing with the contingent and 
not with the certain, with the singular not with the 
typical, he has, if he act at all, to contradict every 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 341 

precept of philosophic apathy, and merely compromise 
with probabilities. 

Ethics then is mixt or " half-bred " philosophy, and 
cannot be pursued as a science by the Pure Reason. 
And this, not only because it is based on certain 
hypotheses, and these in fact if not in name religious 
assumptions, but also because it is concerned with the 
application of Law to individual cases ; x on that best but 
peculiar kind of Law, which, though it is regarded as 
supreme, as ' categorical imperative,' is yet our own 
creation ; depends entirely on our own efforts, for, 
unlike an edict of Nature or Science which precedes 
and constrains, it awaits our recognition and our en- 
deavour, before it can come into being. It wins respect 
and allegiance, like Mill's Deity, by its pathetic weakness. 
Now it is more than doubtful if the Pure Reason can 
afford to recognise the Individual, 2 and Ethics (save as 
the very meagrest and emptiest list of general principles) 
deals with nothing else. Every individual, as such, is 
unique. Every ethical situation indeed can be brought 
nominally under a known law, but the larger half 
remains outside rebelliously and forms an exception ; and 
it is for this reason that, while in modern life moral 
relations have multiplied an alarming degree of complexity, 
and the solving of moral problems has increased in diffi- 
culty, — the general equipment of undoubted maxims is so 
scanty and impoverished, that it may with safety be said 
that this domain has received no new complement for 
two thousand years. And this is clear from the most 
superficial study of modern Moralists ; for example, Kant's 
famous maxim is clearly implicit in every ancient writer ; 
and besides wavers between a truism and an untruth ; for 
from the point of view of Moral Law, it is superfluous 
advice ; from the point of view of the individual (who is 
always unique and exceptional) it is as certainly wrong. 

1 Where the law is subordinated to the individual interest — the reverse of the 
Natural Realm. 

2 All Science proceeds by eliminating the special and the characteristic, and 
subsumes what seems like exception or spontaneity under some higher or more 
general law. 



342 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

§ 3. It would be calamitous, however, if the foundation 
of Ethics and its practical application ceased to be studied 
by ' pure ' philosophers. In ancient times, when the 
pursuit of wisdom was practical, and implied adherence to 
a definite rule of life (somewhat after the fashion of a 
monastic order in the Middle Ages), there was a constant 
temptation to the student to revert to theology, either 
popular or esoteric, for sanctions which abstract principles 
of the Unity of Being, or the sympathy of all Creatures, 
could not supply. Philosophy never existed then, as an 
impartial search after Truth, — it was always in some 
sense a pursuit of personal Happiness. Each School 
received a " fast dye " from the temperament of its 
founder, and the most fertile epoch revived inspiration 
from an exemplary life, and not from a coherent body of 
dogma. Personal bias and instinctive sympathy or 
repulsion decided the young adept in his choice — 
Plotinus, in his tovtov e^rovv, after his first lecture from 
Ammonius Saccas, lays stress upon the fulness of definition 
already in the mind of the inquirer. To-day such 
universal or practical functions in the guidance of youth 
have been undertaken or usurped by the State (in a more 
exacting sense of its responsibility), or by a Church, whose 
theology is not in the strict sense a Science, while its 
practical usefulness would always remain independent of 
its doctrinal postulates. But it will appear the consistent 
duty of a Critical Philosophy to examine, to question, and 
to confirm from its own realm of experience, the general 
principles which we accept traditionally, on authority, or 
instinctively, from some dim notion of noblesse oblige, 
or from some correspondence in sympathy between our 
heart and an actual School or teacher (as in Plotinus' 
case), or indeed emotionally, as in the case of most active 
reformers of Society : — who in all time have acted so far 
in advance of any rational justification that like Plato's 
sage or lover, they have been mostly called insane. All 
Ethics must in the end depend upon the inward motive, 
and the ulterior sanction ; 1 critical philosophy is scarcely 

1 This will remind us of a parallel in the theological field, of the new Ritschlian 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 343 

fitted to provide the one, or to discover the latter. The 
history of Ethics will show us how much fuller and richer 
in content is the half-conscious moral life of the citizen 
or the parent, since the dawn of history, than the 
speculation, which sets out to explain, or professes to 
guide it. How vague, how meagre, are early Greek 
ethics ! how infinitely poorer and more fragmentary and 
disjointed than the actual life of any individual, taken at 
random from the cities of Ionia, where, as human nature 
is at bottom unchanging, we might reasonably expect to 
find the same types as in the moral or social world of to- 
day. Even in the more barbaric times or regions, we 
wonder not so much at the flickering incoherence of 
savage life, confronted with the dangers of Nature and 
the problems of existence, but at its steadfast hold on 
certain definite laws of conduct, and its noble devotion, at 
all costs and hazards, to this convention. The philo- 
sophical expression or explanation of morality has always 
lagged behind the fulness of the realised life. Morality 
concerned with the Good which is not yet, but may be, 
through our endeavour, dwells in a chiaroscuro realm 
of Faith and Instinct ; where that clear light never 
penetrates that is wont to display in unmistakable out- 
lines the realm of Truth or of Power, of mathematical and 
physical law. Into these, antique and somehow pre-exist- 
ent to our thought, we enter only to obey, or control by 
obeying. But in the domain of ethics, we create the law ; 
we realise, or we condemn to nothingness, by our inaction 
or our neglect. We are amazed by the feebleness of its 
sanction or its authority. We find it strange that Kant, 
in an exoteric expression of naive wonder, should confuse 
it with the might of Nature's unalterable sequences. 
Heroism is irreducible to terms of Reason. The limits of 
omnipotence seemed to J. S. Mill to constitute the 
strongest claim on the efforts and the co-operation of 
good men ; the heroic soul is conscious of the same 
attraction in the field of ethics. Its decision is a bold 

emphasis on the First Cause and Final Purpose of the World, — both alike hidden 
from the Speculative Reason. 



344 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

wager in the face of probabilities ; and it has been well 
said that to be moral involves a more exacting or more 
childlike faith than to be religious. 

§ 4. The Ethical philosopher when he does more than 
arrange and tabulate the moral virtues, finds himself 
compelled to preach or to be mute. At each sentence or 
maxim, resting on the precarious base of a vast hypo- 
thesis, of a " moral purpose in the universe, to which I am 
bound by allegiance," — he dreads the Sophist in his audi- 
ence and expects those eternal questions, How do you 
know ? and why am I obliged to follow ? which await all 
moral dogmatism, and can never receive a valid answer 
from theoretical Reason alone. It is for this cause that 
all thinkers, when engaged in studying the motive, and the 
Sanction of right action, either lapse into that mystical 
language which is a sure sign of the default of clear thought, 
or under cover of a system of Egoism or Utilitarianism 
insidiously secrete, as part of the stock-in-trade, those 
principles of disinterestedness or public service, which we 
blush to examine (as part I had almost said of our private 
physical equipment), but for which we find it impossible to 
account. This has been the fate of all English and Scotch 
Moralism. The result does credit to the heart, but perhaps 
neither to the candour or the acumen of the Briton. 
Abroad, a feminine and sentimental appeal to " unphilo- 
sophical " emotions characterises French ethics, wherever 
it has been able to penetrate to really ultimate problems ; 
whilst pantheistic Germany seeks to found upon a 
mystical Monism a definite duty for the individual, whose 
separate existence, though the only immediate datum of 
experience, it treats as illusory. It makes no kind of 
difference whether this tendency is religious, as in Fichte's 
devout and latest writings, or definitely anti-religious, as 
in Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, and Haeckel. 1 

1 Andrew Seth, preface to Man's Place in the Cosmos (pp. vi and vii). 
"Humanism as opposed to Naturalism" (as the aim of the volume) "might 
be described as Ethicism, in opposition to a too narrow Intellectual ism. Man 
as rational, and in virtue of self-conscious reason, the free shaper of his own 
destiny, — furnishes us, I contend, with our only indefeasible standard of value, 
and our clearest light as to the nature of the Divine. He does what Science, 
occupied only with the laws of events, and speculative Metaphysics, when it 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 345 

The dominant note in these followers of Spinoza is 
the call to abandon the present real in favour of a meta- 
physical phantom, which to the man of average sense 
seems to possess none of the qualities usually associated 
with the idea of True Being. The mystical goal may be 
either the Divine Life or Humanity, in its present con- 
dition, or in its future destiny, — but in either case the 
sacrifice of the known for the unknown is demanded ; 
and thus the development of ethical thought, like all 
scientific thought to-day, follows the mystical path, and 
founds itself on an assumption of Unity, for which 
experience empiricism must ever desiderate even probable 
arguments ; — on a denial of individual worth, which how- 
ever deceptive, is the sole certainty of our consciousness. 
The whole question of ethics needs to be restated. In 
terms of Idealism ? Certainly, in no other way can we 
escape mere fragmentary pieces of good business-advice. 
But of an Idealism, which refuses to consider the world, 
whether as fact or design, except as subordinate to the 
consciousness. " What ! " it may be urged, " revert to 
the assumptions of an ' anthropocentric ' vanity ? " I 
answer, they will be found to be less exacting by pure 
Reason than those of Monism, debased into sentimental 
altruism. And, what is even more important (for we are 
dealing with a doubtful department, an " offshoot " of 
philosophy), they alone can satisfy the moral conscious- 
ness and the practical needs of life. 

§ 5. Most of the problems which disquiet reflection 

surrenders itself to the exclusive guidance of the Intellect, alike find unintelligible, 
and are forced to pronounce impossible — he acts." 

Again : " Inexplicable in a sense as man's personal agency is — nay, the one 
perpetual miracle, — it is nevertheless our surest datum, and our only clue to the 
mystery of existence." 

For the precisely opposite view, consult the veteran Haeckel ( The Riddle of 
the Universe). "The Monism of the Cosmos which we establish on the clear 
law of Substance, — proclaiming the absolute dominion of the great eternal iron 
laws throughout the Universe. It thus shatters at the same time the three central 
dogmas of the Dualistic Philosophy — the Personality of God, the Immortality of the 
Soul, and the Freedom of the Will. Upon the vast field of ruin rises, majestic 
and brilliant, the new Sun of our Realistic Monism, which reveals to us the 
wonderful temple of Nature in all its beauty. For the sincere cult of the True, 
the Good, and the Beautiful (which is the heart of our new monistic Religion) — 
we find ample compensation for the anthropistic ideals of God, freedom, And 
immortality, which we have lost. " 



346 ' F. W. BUSSELL vn 

have to be tacitly abandoned or considered as solved 
before the simplest point in ethics can be discussed. 
Philosophy regards life from an exactly opposite position 
to common sense ; it surveys it as if from the other end 
of the telescope ; the ordinary and familiar becomes the 
most abstruse of mysteries, the exceptional and startling 
shrink into the simplest and most easily explained. But 
Ethics being most akin to the common sense of practical 
men, has to assume quite as much, and is equally unable 
to explain its hypotheses, — unless it appeals to the ambigu- 
ous and oracular decisions of Logic or Metaphysic. There 
are many rival schools in the present day : those who 
deny that Ethics can be studied apart from Metaphysical 
presupposition ; those who pronounce Ethics entirely 
independent ; and those who maintain that the Meta- 
physical realm can only be entered through the Ethical, 
and to complete the possible alliances, those who believe 
the key lies in the investigation of Nature. Into the 
merits of their controversy it is not my intention to enter. 
I only desire to point out that there is an almost universal 
agreement that moral studies are scarcely complete in 
themselves, though the precise degree of their dependence 
is a subject of much discussion. It is doubtful if in any 
domain of wisdom these hypotheses receive final and 
adequate proof. In the field of ethics no such attempt 
is made ; latent in every assertion or counsel or maxim 
they are accepted as indispensable ; and, nearest to 
Common Thought just in this department, Philosophy 
is here also much beholden to ordinary consciousness 
for certain necessary ' forms ' of belief, which are the 
atmosphere enfolding every moral action. Not without 
reason in intellectual Greece, did ethical inquiry come 
late and reluctantly to birth ; while in China it never 
advanced beyond the childhood of detached maxims of 
utility, and vaguely authoritative gnomes ; — and to com- 
plete the metaphor, in India, never young, morals have 
never quitted the single and servile precept of absolute 
Quietism. 

§ 6. But to return to the assumption of Occidental 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 347 

Ethics. We are constantly reminded by the contrast 
of other and more ancient systems of one cardinal 
assumption, which will be found to underlie all Western 
Thought. The West European mind — the fruit of the 
conjunction of Hellenism and Judaism under the long 
tutelage of Rome — entertains a prejudice (which, as 
quite beyond rational proof, I can only call instinctive) 
in favour of action, striving, conflict, and social endeavour 
for a common good. 

But the civilised races, who form as Christendom a 
united whole against Barbarism, and can sink their 
differences and deny their religious scepticism in face of 
a general peril, are in a minority ; they compose but one- 
third of the whole human family. 1 And the belief in the 

1 Letters front John Chinaman (1901). " Our civilisation is the oldest in the 
world. It does not follow that it is the best ; but neither, I submit, does it 
follow that it is the worst. Such antiquity is, at any rate, a proof that our 
institutions have presented to us a stability for which we search in vain among 
the nations of Europe. Not only is our civilisation stable — it also embodies, as 
we think, a moral order ; while in yours we detect only an economic chaos. . . . 
We measure the degree of civilisation, not by accumulation of the means of living, 
but by the character and nature of the life lived. Where there are no humane 
and stable relations, no reverence for the past, no respect even for the present, 
but only a cupidinous ravishment of the future — there we think there is no true 
Society. . . . Admitting that we are not what you call a progressive people, we 
yet perceive that progress may be bought too dear." 

After enumerating the natural and human details which to the Chinese seem 
to bring highest moments of emotion in life, — "A rose in a moonlit garden, the 
shadow of trees on the turf . . . the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, 
the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides forever away with its 
freight of music and light, into the shadow and mist of the haunted past, all that 
we have, all that eludes, the bird on the wing, a perfume escapes on the gale — 
to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what is called 
Literature. This we have ; this you cannot give us ; but this you may so easily 
take away. 

" Amid the roar of looms it cannot be heard ; it cannot be seen in the smoke of 
factories ; it is hidden by the wear and the whirl of Western life. And when I 
look at your business men, the men whom you most admire, when I see them day 
after day, year after year, toiling in the mill of their forced and undelighted 
labours ; when I see them importing the anxieties of the day into their scant and 
grudging leisure, and wearing themselves out less by toil than by carking and 
illiberal cares ; — I reflect (I confess, with satisfaction) on the simpler routine of our 
ancient industry, and prize above your new and dangerous routes, the beaten track 
so familiar to our accustomed feet, that we have time even while we pace it, to 
turn our gaze up to the eternal stars." 

Here once more is the ideal of the East held up for our guidance by a dis- 
illusioned Occidental, who impersonates a Chinese proselytiser or at least apologist 
while using the poetry of Maeterlinck and the romantic pathos of Parker. In the 
eighteenth century, China seemed to political reformers in Europe (and with much 
truth) tounite the'resolim dissociabiles, ImperiumetLibertas,' inaconstitutionwhich 
was frankly patriarchal, and a social uniformity which knew no class distinctions. 
To the Idealist of the nineteenth century and still more to the Pessimist, the 



348 F. W. BUSSELL 



VII 



value of the progressive life as the highest is denied by 
the rest ; just as the dignity of manual labour, first taught 
by the mediaeval monks, is peculiar to us. With very 
imperfect historical data the philosophers in the years 
succeeding the French Revolution, thinking that somehow 
they had arrived at the culminating epoch of our race, 
hurriedly set forth the comparative table of human 
records ; and, on the obsolete computation of four thousand 
years before our era, founded a scheme of the Progress of 
Reason, and placed their own time at the dawning of the 
last and happiest period. No one is so audacious to-day 
as to prophesy the unerring fulfilment of man's hopes, or 
the approaching realisation of an earthly paradise. We 
are aware of the infinite spaces of history in the past ; 
we confront, in the future, some accidental comet which 
will whirl into fiery oblivion the petty systems and 
commotions of our Planet ; and nearer at hand, we 
recognise a serious menace to our Western ideals in those 
teeming multitudes, who seem impervious to their influence. 
Whatever is written about ethics or the human destiny 
must be tempered by this wholesome reflection : that we 
are in a minority, and that our view of the world is not 
certain to triumph. And bound up in this view lies our 
earliest assumption: that the life of action in and for society 
is the highest, just because it is the only one possible for 
all ; for the final standard must be within the reach of 
every one. But it needs but a superficial knowledge to 
discover how exceptional we are in this sober emphasis 
on ordinary duties. Nowhere but in West Europe and 

truest and profoundest lessons in philosophy were to be learnt at the feet of the 
Pundit of India, in the ascetic renunciation which marks both Brahmanism and 
the system of Gautama. Even at the close of the century, virtue and contentment 
and a magical authority over natural forces are fitter to live in the single unexplored 
region of the earth ; in Tibet, whither have fled at the visions of Fortunate Isles, 
Hyperboreans, and 'blameless Ethiopians.' But this persistent attempt to dis- 
cover perfection in some almost inaccessible fastness, either of region or of 
philosophy, is a sign of protest against the mechanical complications and the 
anxious uneasiness of our Western life. Nietzsche, Maxim Gorki, and Mr. Taylor 
(Problem of Conduct), may be combined as having from another point of view 
condemned the fundamental axioms of our Western ideas of progress and 
civilisation. (For Gorki, on whom has fallen the mantle and a double 
portion of Nietzsche's rebellious spirit, cf. Dr. Dillon in Co7itemporary Review, 
February 1902.) 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 349 

its offshoot America is goodness and moral worth the 
criterion ; elsewhere knowledge and supposed spiritual 
gifts, or brute courage, constitute an unquestioned primacy ; 
and we may ask whether the undoubted survival of 
aristocratic modes of thought and popular confidence in 
familiar names, is not due to this trustfulness in the power 
of the motto ' Noblesse oblige.' Knowledge, ever since 
Socrates' fatally ambiguous use of (fypovijats, has elsewhere 
become identified with the Highest Morality ; and a 
privileged caste has been set apart with the approbation 
of the mob, not for a disinterested guidance of ordinary 
affairs (which we expect and receive from a Western 
aristocracy) but for an idle or contemptuous contemplation 
of their own perfection and the passing show of a universe 
which has no meaning, and of the vain efforts of others 
to reach the goal of tranquillity. The Yogi or Sanyasi is 
respected by the people, not because he helps but because 
he despises them. Now our Western system is in the 
true sense open to all; for it alone can provide a sanction 
for the humblest endeavour, and give a meaning and attach 
a value to the simplest act. Here there is no false 
aristocracy (either of caste or cleverness), no doctrine of 
reserve ; and in the final issue, our philosophies and our 
religions stand or fall by the verdict of the vulgar. 

§ 7. But in face of this dissent among older civilisa- 
tions it is worth while to inquire whence comes this firm 
conviction as to the value of the Moral Life. It is 
certainly not derived from a contemplation of Nature. 

So careful of the type she seems, 
So careless of the single life. 

Morality exactly reverses this ; for Duty before demand- 
ing the self-surrender of an individual to the Common 
Good, must assure and convince him, however dimly, of 
his own dignity and worth. In spite of an abortive 
attempt to unite the physical and the moral realm in 
evolutionary Ethics, it is sufficient here to assert as 
obvious that ' Nature ' gives no such sanction, provides 
no such example. At a certain point natural philosophers, 
justly alarmed for the interests of morality, overstep the 



350 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

inductive method, refuse to be guided by fact, and take 
refuge from a destructive scepticism in emotional appeal. 
The two realms ' idly confront ' one another, as did Plato's 
ideal and real worlds ; and an impassable gulf stretches 
between them, which no introduction of sentiment into 
physics, or mechanism into morals can ever bridge. 1 
Ethics cannot be studied (as Stoics studied theology) as a 
mere episode to physics, as a subordinate department in 
a larger survey. The student of physics must perforce 
abandon in the natural world for a moment that ' anthro- 
pocentric ' and prepossessed attitude, but he will resume it 
again as a necessary condition of his practical life. Only 
because each man believes he is an end in himself, can he 
treat others as if they likewise were ends in themselves, 
and not things or chattels, but persons. This may be, 
like its complementary postulate of Freedom, like the 
existence of the material world, an illusion ; but it is one 
from which we cannot escape, and which is implied in 
our most trivial act. Anarchism and Extreme Socialism 
wade to the Millennium through the murder of the Superflu- 
ous, whether monarch or infant weakling. As we see the 
world outside only in terms of ourselves ; as we have no 
conception of what it is in itself, or how it would appear 
to beings with other senses ; as we have to be satisfied 
with this relativity of all Truth ; so in the field of practice ; 
let us be content to accept this belief in the value and 
equality of the individual person as the final foundation 
of our conduct ; hypothesis indeed, yet unassailable, for 
without it Ethics is impossible. 

§ 8. We must presume then that the life of striving, 
of conscious advance and progress has some ulterior sanc- 
tion, some as yet hidden significance ; that to be merged 
in contemplation of the Eternal order is an unprofitable 
counsel of despair ; that the ' single life,' with its pressing 
and immediate duties, has some import ; and that the 
social fabric is maintained by recognising and conciliating 
individual rights, that social fabric, which can only be 

1 Notice the confusion in Professor Huxley's mind in his strangely illogical 
essay on Evolution and Ethics. 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 351 

termed an end in itself because it exists only for persons. 
But here is a still deeper problem. Are we entitled to 
speak of a person at all ? meaning thereby a seat and 
centre of activity, free and spontaneous, at least in the 
final decision of its tribunal introducing from time to time 
a new element, a new and incalculable force into the 
tangled but continuous and unbroken skein of natural 
causes ? This is without question the greatest problem of 
our time ; and yet from the point of view of ethics, it has 
a merely academic interest. Whether, as Lotze suggests, 
a leading monad bears sway as some limited but 
responsible monarch among lesser centres of conscious- 
ness ; whether the Soul be undiscoverable to closest 
scrutiny, and our sense of permanent identity a vexatious 
hallucination ; whether the old traditional dualism of 
Spirit and body must be modified or retained ; — all this 
can be of account only in the theoretic domain of 
psychologic Ethics ; it cannot enter, as a perplexing 
problem, the practical region. We still use the old 
language of blame and praise, of moral responsibility, of 
conscience, and of duty ; and we are obliged to acknow- 
ledge that when questions remain balanced by equal 
arguments, we are at liberty to take the line of greatest 
attraction in making our choice. It is a feat of sheer 
legerdemain when a moral appeal is tacked on incon- 
sistently to some disproof of free-will. We have to 
reckon with the abiding sense of the community ; and in 
apportioning our justice in the public courts, or over the 
private conscience, we start from the hypothesis of this 
stable point at least, — the reality of the self, and the 
persistence of the ego, amid apparent change. We need 
not be ashamed, especially in this doubtful province of 
philosophy, of seeming to shirk ultimate problems. Ethics 
is the realm of Faith ; and as time goes on, we seem to 
increase rather than diminish the indispensable articles of 
our creed ; — but the additional weight is no argument for 
surrendering one of them, for they grow consistent in 
their very paradox. 

8 9. The weight of hypothesis which the Ethical agent 



352 F. W. BUSSELL v .i 

has to carry in the simplest moral act may be now 
definitely described under the following heads. He must 
assume (i) that the world has a meaning or is capable of 
bearing one, and this through his personal efforts ; (2) 
that these efforts are to some extent voluntary, 
spontaneous, and effective, and that indifference is a 
shirking of responsibility ; (3) that social or racial 
progress is a fitting object for dutiful striving in 
co-operation, but that this cause can only be advanced by 
recognising the unique value and permanent import of the 
individual as opposed to any abstraction called the type ; 
(4) that from this point of view and from no other 
(whether mental, racial, or physical), men are equal, on the 
side of moral personality; (5) that it is a mere poetic 
allegory (and perhaps not wholly a harmless one) to speak 
of the progress or education of the Human Race, since to 
bear a real meaning, there must be in the subject a 
continuity of conscious experience ; (6) that as the 
ultimate stimulus in Ethics is an inspiriting sense of 
freedom to do good, and as the supreme motive will 
always be, sense of loyalty to a cause not yet won, — the 
result of his action to the single-minded devotee will be 
Happiness ; (7) finally, that as the aim of all conscious 
effort must be satisfaction felt by some one, and not 
the fulfilment or (if I may be allowed the paradox) the 
selfish gratification of some impersonal Law, 1 Happiness 
must be the goal, and Duty (or the recognition of Law) 
but a means to this end. 

The sole ultimate test of the truth of a system, of its 
value, or its endurance, is and always must be the warmth 
and sympathetic acceptance of the conscious personality, 
who realises by his efforts an otherwise idle or empty 
Ideal. Altruism is accepted as a philosophical norm of 
conduct, not because it is rationally justifiable (which 
perhaps it is not), but because in experience it excites the 
highest feelings of satisfaction and joy, and " brings a man 

1 " In what way," asks William James in his Will to Believe (p. 196), "is 
this fact of wrongness made more acceptable or intelligible when we imagine it to 
consist rather in the laceration of an a priori ideal order than in the disappoint- 
ment of a living God?" 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 353 

peace at the last." " Love " is the religious term accepted, 
as implying the passing away of timorous or calculating 
obedience to a law, as external restraint is the dictate of 
an inconsiderate and irresponsible Superior. It would be 
difficult to disprove that we have a perfect right to evade 
such a decree, like physical laws, if we can. " Love " 
secures the peculiar and inward approbation of the Law, 
as in some measure connected with our own interests ; and 
this approbation is the ultimate fact of interest and 
importance in Morals. This connection is almost 
invariably a pure matter of Faith ; but it is absolutely 
needful to postulate it, as I cannot believe that lasting 
approbation — sufficient, at least, to induce practice — can 
ever be bestowed upon that which in the end disregards 
the private and eternal interest of the approver. 

II 

§10. If we were to divide man's life somewhat 
roughly into its passive and active halves, we might 
call the former Ethics, the latter Politics. No casual 
student of the history of moralising can fail to see 
that the negative side is the more prominent ; — the extent 
of the subordination of the part to the whole, of the 
forgiveness and forbearance due to an erring brother ; or 
the precise limits which a sense of uniform and impartial 
justice places on the caprice or the desires of the 
individual. Scanty are the positive maxims either in 
antiquity or more modern times ; and if a wide and 
effective theory of life has ever taken place among 
philosophic systems, it will generally be found to owe 
little to philosophy, much to some supposed Divine 
legislation, which insisting on the virtues of docile 
obedience and Faith, permits no individual scrutiny or 
casuistry, and perhaps for this very reason claims and 
obtains a peculiar reverence in the strife of perplexed 
disputants. If we consider what are the points worth 
recording in the Hellenic systems, or the most striking 
features in the life of their founders, we shall see how 

2 A 



354 F - w - BUSSELL vn 

small was the encouragement or explanation given to 
active life in Society, either by precept or example. At a 
very early period their reflection had convinced them that 
ordinary civic duties were incompatible with the cultivation 
of the (supposed) highest gifts of man's nature. The 
" common good," naively understood, even in the earliest 
times, to be the end at which all must aim, is never 
reconciled to the single interest. A gulf separates the 
two worlds, the starry heavens of Anaxagoras, the world- 
order of Diogenes the /cocr/xo7roA.fcT^9, from that precise 
part of the brotherhood of man in which their lot had 
been cast. For fellows they looked about for some 
worthier associates; the undiscovered sage; or the initiates 
of a sect or a school ; or the Divine thought, that 
universal and impersonal Reason (of which both God and 
men partook) ; or the forces of Nature, as the river that 
said " Hail Pythagoras ! " — in that despairing universalism 
which degraded man to an exact equality with the other 
animals ; — not only in the Italian schools of " totem and 
taboo," but in the cold intellectualism of the Academy, or 
in the credulous scepticism of a Celsus. Plato makes the 
official and public duties an unpleasing though needful 
deviation from the routine of that speculative meditation 
which might so soon degenerate into mystical reverie. 
The reward for this distasteful mixing in affairs was an 
undisturbed leisure for tasks which if not pure Mathematics, 
were astonishingly vague, and must have been something 
between Euclid and a Rosary. Cicero, his constant 
imitator, with a significant innovation, places the recom- 
pense of Scipio's unselfish patriotism in a home beyond 
the stars, where he can watch and comprehend the 
mechanism of the world. Aristotle's interest, like Renan's 
in public matters, is that of the Student, not the Reformer; 
and the quietistic tendencies of the later Schools are too 
well known to need special mention here ; no one (it is to be 
hoped) being misled by the Stoics' parrot-like iteration (as 
a mere academic commonplace) iroXnevaeaOaL top cro(f)6v. 
Where a positive influence is exerted, it is due to 
character and personality. Pythagoras, though anchoritic 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 355 

in his tendencies, founds a monastic brotherhood, and 
secretly guides the politics of the Italian commonwealths. 
Socrates gives a certain positive content to this empty- 
though luminous disc of philosophic morality ; Epicurus 
overcomes the gross or selfish axioms of his creed in the 
simplicity of his life and the warmth of his friendship. 

§ 11. The common conviction of mankind (when not 
too highly civilised) is in favour of social life, with its 
good-natured " give and take " ; but ancient inquirers who 
set out to explore the reasons for this conviction were so 
far from discovering them that they end by denying. 
Aristotle, casting into the mould of a technical definition 
this belief (shall we call it innate presupposition ?) in man 
as %wov irokLTLKov, is yet much more enamoured of the 
peculiar differentia which makes man, above all things, %£>ov 
decoprjTifcov. Whether we are to believe the perpetual legends 
of the intercourse of Greek leaders with a foreign or 
Oriental influence — -with Egyptian Priests at Naucratis, 
Memphis and Meroe, with Magi, Scythians or Gymno- 
sophists — it is perfectly clear that Greek ethical study led 
from the outset far away from civil life and the healthy 
turmoil and democratic play of equal forces ; that the 
peculiar temper, inculcated on the proficient, was one of 
calm and resignation, either defiant and paradoxic, as 
among Cynics and certain of the Stoics, or that pure 
negative pessimism, which found its last word in the avkj^ov 
teal airkyov of the Roman period. Even in the Schools 
which accepted as " goods " the friendliness and good word 
of fellow-citizens and the ample equipment of a comfort- 
able life, which pursued some definite end not only of 
vague and ascetic moral culture, but some positive branch 
of study — even in these the ideal sage was rather the 
member of an invisible kingdom of Reason than an 
interested or responsible member of a corporation. No 
subjects were more frequently discussed than whether the 
wise man should marry, bring up children, take part in 
political life ; and this very fact shows that reflection 
could not (even among a wholesome people like the 
Greeks) give a sufficient reason for the common behaviour 



356 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

and conviction of ordinary men ; and that starting from 
an impulse to discover and confirm, it only succeeded 
in undermining every possible sanction altogether. What 
accounts for this peculiar phenomenon ? One fact 
there is without doubt : — the Greek passion for Oneness — 
as noticeable in their theoretic or ideal aspirations, as their 
childlike delight in multiplicity and variegation in practical 
life. A single transmutable yet identical Substance (or 
(frvais) in the world ; an Idea, which binds into a stable 
faggot the feeble manifold of the particular instance, and 
this aga'in subsumed under a more comprehensive idea 
until at last Unity is reached ; a rigid crystalline globe, 
in which not only the individual life becomes illusion, 
but even the familiar experience of motion and of change ; 
a kingdom of No^-ra, which is almost one with the 
individual thinking spirit as 6p66s \6<yo<;, cppovrja-c;, and 
which is reached first by divesting the object thought, 
of all garments belonging to its position in time and 
space, of all specific differentiae or idiosyncrasies, until the 
clear but attenuated outline of its inner essence comes to 
view ; next, by a parallel process of de-qualification in 
the subject, wherein the thinking mind abandons, so as 
to attain truth, the cold dualism of knowledge for the 
warm glow of immediate union, or at least of inter- 
penetration : — such are the forms of this Hellenic Monism. 
Epicurus alone, nearest to common life and thought in 
spite of his pretentious style, 1 is the sole representative 
who absolutely and of set purpose discards all pretence to 
Unity, to give free play to the individual caprice. As he 
pertinently remarks, " It would be a slight service to set 
free the mind from terror of divine forces, to fetter it anew 
in a grosser servitude to inexorable physical Law. For 
you may have hopes of conciliating the one, but the other 
you cannot escape." 

8 1 2. And we must also observe that owing to the 
desire for a comprehensive but vague unity 2 either of Law, 

1 For the ffa<prjs of Diogenes Laertius must be ironical. 

2 To a Soul possessed of this craving for unity, rest is impossible until the final 
goal is reached. The State, the Fatherland, is but a phase, and gives way to a 
KoiXfi6iro\is or to Nature. The eighteenth century is much to blame ; one of 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 357 

or Force, or Reason, the Greek ethical student threw 
himself into the arms of Nature, and refused to recognise 
that in history alone can man find himself mirrored. 
Man's place in the great commonwealth of natural order, 
his peculiar function and differentia — this was the object 
of their search. Now the essence of Nature (as conceived 
by the Greeks) is to be unchanging through change, to 
exhibit no conscious progress towards a goal, to be 
indifferent to historical development. The desire of the 
Schools is not to found an ethics of casuistry to help the 
doubting in critical circumstance, but to discover a "typical" 
excellence or perfection, towards which all who are capable 
should strive. Reason unfalteringly proclaimed that the 
exercise and the discipline of her own powers was alone 
a suitable task ; and the rarefied and shadowy form of the 
abnegating Sage hovers mournfully over the entire period, 
as the supreme UapdSeiy/jia for imitation, though they 
allowed with regrets that it had never been realised. 
Gazing like Narcissus into the vague mysteries of a 
physical or spiritual universe, and seeing therein a faint 
semblance of themselves (though lacking all realness or 
positive content), pining for this image, perversely shun- 
ning the companionship of grosser mortals, they ended 
by taking the " salto mortale " into the chilly waters, 
finding alas ! unlike Hylas, no Naiads beneath the 
surface to welcome them. I have elsewhere pointed 
out 1 the peculiar momentousness of the succession of 
the Judaeo-Christian ideal of life to the Classical. On 
this modern Europe has founded her principles and her 
institutions, with her signal and vigorous hold on social 
life, on present duties, on the duty and the happiness 
of effort in whatever direction. Many before Nietzsche 
(who cannot be styled an original thinker) have complained 

its children, Michelet, perhaps sunk deepest in superstitious veneration for abstract 
norms, writes in his book (Nos Fils, Introd. xii) : "II faut que le jeune ame ait 
un substantiel aliment. II y faut une chose vivante. Quelle chose ? La Patrie, 
son ame, son histoire, La tradition nationale, La Nature, Universelle Patrie. 
Voila une nourriture qui rejouira remplira le cceur de l'enfant." One of the most 
hopeful features of the new century is the general discredit that has come over 
these mischievous assurances of a vague and sentimental Realism. 
1 School of Plato, Book iii. "Judaism." 



358 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

of the feminine character of Christian morality. The 
virtues seem at first sight all negative and ascetic ; pas- 
sivity is the end or TeXo9 in the religious life of grace, 
and in daily patient intercourse with a scoffing and 
unbelieving world. The hermit -life rather than the 
cenobitic was the higher ideal of the first three centuries. 
But hardly suspected under bishops and clergy, a busy 
but silent transformation of a decadent age was proceed- 
ing ; and may we not ask if Greek and Indian examples 
of fortitude, constancy, and retirement were not largely 
influential ? With the earliest promise of probable power 
in the secular sphere, with the conviction of the delay in the 
Second Advent, the ideal insensibly changes. Through- 
out the Middle Ages (though the devout mystic may 
possibly regret the degeneracy) we may trace the new 
value and ennoblement of ordinary duties and of busi- 
ness, the consecration of matter and of effort. While 
still recognising a hierarchy of ideals, the Church did 
not deny the worth of the lower ; while believing that 
humble Faith could be transcended in knowledge or 
lost in the actual Vision, she still paid honour to simple 
and ignorant goodness. Now this strenuous interference 
in active life and government (sometimes deprecated by 
the secular spirit, always regretted by the devotional) is 
due to a fundamental article in the new creed, " that the 
Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." 
It contradicts the Realism which rendered nugatory much 
of Greek thought and much of mediaeval rationalism. A 
new form of teleology (not unlike the Socratic) had held 
the world of Nature to be for man's use, his trial, discipline, 
and development. The entire emphasis is removed from 
this indifferent background of our efforts to the fortunes of 
the individual Soul, or the Divine edicts concerning it. 
At first, interest is mainly concerned with a transcendental 
doctrine of pre-natal sin and its consequence, and a Divine 
fiat of mercy or of reprobation. It soon centres round 
the prosperity of a visible state, with sure foundations, 
and a goal well within view. Instead of the ' cosmic 
emotion ' of Greece in face of the marvel of the General 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 359 

Order, arises a belief in the progress of a tangible kingdom, 
ruled by an absent head through an inspired vicegerent. 
This thought inspired most of the self-devotion of those 
ages, for if you preach Unity you will not get it, and the 
average man will only work loyally for a cause to which 
he knows himself to be superior. The clue to the meaning 
of man and a justification of his efforts here, is found not 
in Nature, but in history. Now Judaism and Christianity 
are the only two religions in which the historical element 
predominates over the transcendental and the dogmatic ; 
and in consequence the only ones in which the individual 
finds a significance and a place, and an assurance of his 
abiding value. 1 

§ 13. In this brief survey of ethical thought down to 
the opening promises of modern philosophy, we have seen 
how the independent study of ethics has tended to throw 
back the student on himself, alienate him from the common 
life, the world of society or particulars, and concentrate 
his attention on a typical and in effect unattainable 
perfection, derived from an idealistic view of the Universe ; 
sometimes gladdening his solitariness with hopes of higher 
companionship, but always encouraging him to wait in 
passive expectancy the coming of heavenly visitants. 
Meantime, the unreflecting or the docile, have been 
content to go about their ordinary duties, secure in certain 
axioms (unexamined though they be), derived from ex- 
perience of life, from tradition, from public opinion, or 
from early training, based on a revelation which they 
believed Divine. The Feud of the vulgar with philosophy 
was at least justified so far as they saw in these studies 
a pretext for abstention, and for an idleness that was 
often dissolute and indecent ; which shocked and derided 
rather than confirmed those common prejudices, emotions, 

1 Deussen, writing on Indian Philosophy, has remarked: "As surely as the 
Will and not the Intellect is the centre of a man's nature, so surely must the 
pre-eminence be assigned to Christianity, in that its demand for a renewal of 
the Will is peculiarly vital and essential. But as certainly as man is not mere 
Will but Intellect besides, so certainly will that Christian renewal of the Will 
reveal itself on the other side as a renewal of knowledge, just as the Upanishads 
teach." Thus in the New Testament and the Sacred Books of the East, " these 
two noblest products of the religious consciousness of mankind," he reconciles 
Oewpia. and Tpd^is, and Aquinas and Duns Scotus. 



360 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

and sentiments, upon which was based even the most rudi- 
mentary of Greek commonwealths. The union of Ethics 
(as the negative side) with Politics (as the art of practical 
life in Society) was the result of various forces at work 
in the early centuries of our era. The apparent quiescence 
of early Christian Society was but a period of feigning of 
idleness, a reserving of energy, or a new storing of power. 
The union of the two spheres of the Secular and the 
Sacred under a single authority brought in for a time a 
conciliation of interests, the common good and the unit's 
welfare. The Roman Church might elevate the contem- 
plative virtues, following Aristotle, as a counsel of perfection ; 
but it never neglected to guide, indeed to interfere with 
life in its minutest detail. 1 But with the division of 
provinces in the growing spirit of independence — a division 
which we unhesitatingly assert to be a final, conclusive, 
and salutary conquest of the human mind — came a new 
attempt to discover an independent (naturalistic or 
egoistic) basis of moral conduct ; and to free from an 
irksome villeinage, not merely science, but conduct. 
Beginning once more in vacuo, the early attempts at 
systematising moral behaviour astonish us by their crude- 
ness, their inferiority to current practice, their niggard 
calculation of self-interest, their ignorance of human 
nature. These philosophers, weighted (like Huxley in 
more modern times) with the doctrine of Original Sin, 
could conceive of no good in human nature. Each man 
was a " child of wrath " ; a grasping yet pusillanimous 
savage, whose quarrelsomeness threatened the race with 
extinction, had not a covenant of fear, to impose bounds 
on this fatal liberty, been framed in some mythical age. 
Self-interest could be the sole motive for action ; and 
government, religion, and the control of public opinion, 
were but outward restraints, necessary indeed to the 
welfare of the majority called the State, but awakening 

1 Heine (Religion and Philosophy in Germany) and most historians of 
philosophy are extraordinarily at fault in estimating mediaeval aims and tendencies. 
To take Aquinas and Bonaventura as types of the whole age is as great a mistake 
as to take Huysmans or (on another level) d'Annunzio as specimens of the aspira- 
tions of all French or all the Italians. 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 361 

no sympathetic echo, certainly no loyal devotion, in the 
heart of the individual. They owed their origin to that 
defect of human nature (or the universal order) which 
prevented in the conflict of equal * and unyielding interests 
the attainment of personal happiness in supreme selfishness 
and irresponsibility. While Law, civil and ecclesiastical, 
while government, arbitrary or democratic, with the whole 
machine of social intercourse, pursued the even and 
unreflecting tenor of their way, and allowed no doubts 
or sophistries to interfere with the orderliness of civilised 
society, — the Philosopher, ignorant or careless alike of his 
own inner psychology or of man's historic development, 
stood helpless and discouraged when confronted with the 
simplest moral action. He searches for the spring of 
action amid the most universal and brutish of our natural 
instincts (that of self-preservation at all costs). Failing 
to discover it, he was in the end compelled to call in the 
aid of an inexplicable and arbitrary moral law imposed 
by Divine Legislation, whose sanctions (especially after 
the failure and abandonment of religious persecution) 
remained ambiguous, or were relegated to the somewhat 
uncertain sphere of a future life. So impotent were the 
pretentions of Ethics to independence at that period. It 
is far from my purpose to refuse to Philosophy an ultimate 
and honourable alliance with a religious view of the world, 
but it is mere weakness to take refuge so hurriedly in 
the Divine. 

§14. The Greeks, starting with the obvious definition 
of man as %a>ov ttoXctlkov, had nevertheless tended to centre 
interest on the equally unmistakable fact that he was 
£gW \ojikov. It was found impossible to reconcile the 
two domains, and the wise man looked elsewhere for the 
perfect employment of his highest faculties (ev&ai/j,ovla) 
than in the narrow duties of domestic and social life. The 
best of men, the sincerest of philosophers, when at length 

1 The early post- Reformation speculators were very proud of having upset 
the hierarchical House of Lords, called Mediaeval Feudalism. Interest centred 
on the fiction of pre-social man, " naked and unashamed." Postulating for him 
a liberty and an equality which they were at no pains to define, they led directly to 
the horrors of the French Revolution. 



362 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

invested with a power nominally absolute, was unable to 
effect any improvement in mankind, or indeed exert any 
influence on the fabric of Society. The reign of Marcus 
Aurelius, disastrous to the Romans, was, however, useful 
to posterity, as warning against excessive hopes in 
philosophic or scientific moralism to-day, or in the results 
of academic or idealistic legislation. Whatever the cause, 
the schism was complete ; and philosophy, though it 
claims to be a practical rule of living, had to leave the 
real business to the equity and opportunism of Roman 
administration. In the Christian period, in spite of the 
practical efficacy of the Catholic Church in the sphere of 
conduct, it must be confessed that in theory the significance 
and value of this world was subordinated to the future 
kingdom of recompense. The rationalism of the School- 
men, exerted with startling audacity in the region of 
Theosophy and the deepest mysteries of the Divine 
essence, never applied itself to a thoughtful survey of 
human nature, its springs of action, and capability of 
perfection, but contented itself with an empty and formal 
classification of qualities and virtues. Thus, as we have 
seen, into this unknown region of our own heart the early 
independent philosophers of modern times penetrated with 
the burden of original sin on their shoulders, and saw in 
man — apart from the divine grace (as some still supposed) 
or the restraining influence of external law, "the interest 
of the many weak " — nothing but a beast of prey. The 
Church, rich in acts of mercy, and in striking examples 
of the highest unselfishness, had nevertheless no theory to 
account for the more generous emotions (let us hope a 
fairly large portion of our life) except on the hypothesis 
of self-interest, the attainment of a deferred annuity or 
an eternal reward. Practice, here as often in advance of 
thought (because love and loyalty, the true marks of life, 
cannot be expressed in terms of thought) — exposed to 
the notice of the speculator an entire class of behaviour, 
for which he had no name in his lists but " benevolence " ; 
and yet on this the interest of Society was more and more 
concentrating. Of the immediate unreflecting pleasure of 



vn THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 363 

an unselfish action, without this deliberate rational calcula- 
tion of its effects in a transcendental realm, philosophers 
before Shaftesbury must have had ample experience, but 
did as a matter of fact fail to understand the significance. 
And as since that time the Problem of disinterestedness 
has stood in the forefront of all ethical discussion, it is 
there that the real puzzle lies, the true difficulty of a 
rational presentation of ethics. 

When the French Revolution, born of the brutish 
axiom of pure self-interest, suddenly (like modern scientific 
sentimentalism) called upon its votaries to sacrifice them- 
selves to an abstraction, it could indeed readily count upon 
a firm loyalty and devotion to principles if no longer to 
persons. But it could not account for this without paradox, 
nor explain it without contravening the sacred laws of the 
" Age of Reason." Reason indeed, as Mr. Kidd has 
pointed out, would rather seem to summon us from the 
vain prospect of a terrestrial paradise for some remote 
race, to the " cultivation of our own garden " — the single 
remembered adage of Voltaire's Candide. 

§15. The Nineteenth Century, which we can no 
longer call ' present ' or ' our own,' belonging, as it does, to 
impartial history and criticism, is marked by two some- 
what opposite tendencies which closely considered are 
irreconcilable: (1) the practical benevolence, first issuing 
in a readjustment of imaginary civic rights, as might be 
expected from the visionary idealism of the followers of 
the French Revolution, and now turning to the more 
useful problem of the substantial betterment of the 
worker's lot, not only as a matter of compulsory education, 
or sanitation by means of Act of Parliament, but as a 
personal and sympathetic familiarity with individuals in 
the suffering class ; (2) the much-eulogised advance in 
human Science, 1 both in destroying the boundaries of 
nations and their mutual exclusiveness, in eliminating the 
marvellous or the unknown (one of the chief sources of 
hope in our life) not only from this shrunken planet but 

1 "Science" (says Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe) "has made modern life 
cheerful and comfortable." 



364 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

even from stellar space, and in manifesting the reign of a 
law and a certainty or a fatalism — which by no stretch of 
fancy can be called moral or retributive — dominant and 
supreme in every part of our body or mind, in the lot of 
nations, in the destiny of the poor. The former makes 
for practical effort, the latter for quietism and abstention. 
The one rests on the conviction of the abiding value of 
the individual, however difficult to explain, justify or 
define, and the relativity of all else; the other, whether 
from the side of religious or physical Monism, 1 preaches 
that complete or implicit mysticism, which denying the 
individual as an illusion, and glozing over his sufferings in 
advancing the world -purpose for some inscrutable end, 
proclaims the tyranny of the triumphant One. 2 The 
practical tendency, clinging fast to religious dogma or at 
least to that spirit of endeavour which it seems to beget, 
gives especial attention to the weaker of mankind, and 
repairing the more obvious unfairness of lot by charity, 
saves the infirm, and combats Natural Selection at every 
point. The other, with eyes fixed on the unity of the 

1 And the two species are very hard to distinguish, as may be seen in the 
vacillations of Stoicism. 

2 It is worth noticing that a protest against this dominion of abstractions to 
which Europe, freed from arbitrariness of kings and priests, is bidden to bow, — 
reaches us from a pioneer of anarchy, the opposite of Socialism, in rejecting 
Realism for the concrete. "MaxStirner" (says the eloquent Vernon Lee) "builds 
up his system . . . upon the notion that the Geist, the intellect that forms 
conceptions, is a colossal cheat, for ever robbing the individual of its due, and 
marring life by imaginary obstacles. . . . Against this kingdom of Delusion the 
human individual — der Einzige — has been since the beginning of time slowly 
and painfully fighting his way ; never attaining to any kind of freedom, but merely 
exchanging one form of slavery for another, slavery to the Religious delusion for 
slavery to the Metaphysical delusion, slavery to Divine right for slavery to civil 
liberty, slavery to dogma, commandment, heaven and hell, for slavery to 
sentiment, humanity, progress — all equally mere words, conceits, figments, by 
which the wretched individual has allowed himself to be coerced and martyrised.; 
the wretched Individual who alone is a Reality." We may discount, to be sure, 
the violence of Stirner, or the Thrasymachean unscrupulousness of Nietzsche ; in 
the somewhat anaemic Europe of to-day, we are not likely to see an outburst of 
those simpler and barbaric sentiments of rapine. It is not the anarchy of Force 
but of Quiescence, not Kropotkin but Tolstoi, that is the danger. That the 
leisured and (presumably) educated classes should look down on politics is perhaps 
natural but alarming. "Duty in anything but a negative form is incompatible 
with Happiness." — Before an inalterable and undeviating Evolution (whence and 
whether we know not), whether of physical power or of a Universe of thought 
(Wundt, Ethics, pp. 178-180), any real effort is superfluous. If we do'not bow 
to the Universal will, we stand outside the course of events, and deludejburselves 
with the pleasing luxury of defiance (as the Stoic did, for all his pussy-cat 
resignation). 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 365 

Universe, or the outward prosperity of a Society, advo- 
cates, in its more candid moments, " Social Surgery," and 
demands to control and appraise the output of human 
material as much as the amount and value of any other 
commodity. It does not require the violent language of 
Anarchy to assure us that the weak individuals who yet 
form the strong majority will never submit to this. The 
European mind has been for six hundred years striving 
to overthrow the Heteronomy of Dogma and Deduction, 
and find out some more estimable substitute than un- 
questioning passive obedience — non-resistance in politics, 
and confidence in a father confessor's guidance in spiritual 
matters. The individual in the very moment of victory 
is certainly not going on his travels to discover a new and 
more exacting master. Around the mediaeval objects of 
popular reverence, the Sovereign, the Emperor, the 
Director, there hovered all the radiance of Divine 
sanction. Law was personified, and (as Epicurus saw) a 
person is adaptable, and may be mollified or exchanged. 1 
The popular suffrage was won by the appeal to democratic 
instinct, which deluded the commonalty into willing 
obedience even in the case of the French soldier of the 
Revolution, because the highest offices in Church and 
State, nay the Empire itself, were open to all. 2 But even 
the cleverness and the imagination of Comte cannot invest 
the Race, Humanity, with any of this lost charm. As a 
stimulant to action it is ineffective ; as a substitute for 
religious feeling it is absurd. 

§ 16. It is above all necessary to remember that any 
ethical system must be founded upon consideration for 
the individual. All the modern movements bound up in 
the general terms, Trades Unionism and Socialistic Legis- 
lation, are (so far as they are demanded by the working 
classes) frankly egoistic ; recognising co-operation as 

1 Thus Despotism has always found a corrective in assassination, and is more 
sensitive than any other form of government to public opinion, if it once finds 
expression. 

* So are political offices to-day, in the Democratic regimen which defeats and 
denies itself. The only cure for the complementary evils of professional statesmen 
and pessimistic abstention is a hard-working and gratuitous aristocracy. 



366 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

essential, but subordinate to the attainment of individual 
desires, and as a means not as an end. Calvinism which 
enslaved the will to a divine and inscrutable edict, out of 
the plane of human reason and justice, was repelled with 
no less indignation by the new movement than the doctrine 
of passive obedience to a luxurious king's caprice. How- 
ever decorated by appeals to abstract Right and Justice, 
the writings of the Labour leaders aim clearly at one 
thing — the equal division of external goods, to which, by 
the way, the Greek schools subsequent to Aristotle united 
to deny the title good altogether. Disappointed alike 
with the failure of Machinery and the Franchise to increase 
the general distribution of comforts, and to put an end to 
the subservience of the million to the luxury of a few, 
they entertain a justifiable ambition ; but it is difficult to 
impart ethical notions into this challenge, except those of 
a candid and thorough-going Eudsemonism. 1 Universal 
Eudaemonism indeed, as Wundt would call it, but only so 
because in Utilitarianism alone is there secure fruition of 
personal happiness. The prospect of the extinction of 
competition in European Society cannot be seriously 
regarded. The voluntary abandonment of self-determina- 
tion may take place under stress of national circumstances 
(the case of France under Napoleon III. will recur) — or 
of individual privation. Something of the sort we see in 
those combinations of Socialism which often demand 
more patient self-sacrifice of the unit than they can repay 
by any tangible benefit. But in Europe, at least in the 
Germanic and progressive part, the whole temper of the 
people is against State control in private affairs, and the 
same irksomeness which will eventually expel Militarism, 
would make short work of its would-be successor. 
Founded amid the wild forests which the Germania of 
Tacitus describes to us, and gradually spreading over the 
homes of now decadent Classical civilisation, the Germanic 
individualism is loyal to Sovereign and State, because of 

1 If the undeviating Law of Natural Selection, or the equally compelling 
edicts of Social Legislation, could bring the much-needed reforms, the individual 
need not exert himself, as success would be certain, and his efforts superfluous. 



vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 367 

the principle of noblesse oblige: just because it is not a 
compulsory but a willing homage. If the practice of war 
is demanding the greater freedom and spontaneity of the 
single soldier, in the political and ethical world there 
seems to be a similar recognition of the need of an initial 
(not a subsequent) independence of system and formula. 
The uniting bond between the (often) lawless caprice or 
egoism of the one, and the general order and welfare of 
the whole, must be a respect and an affection for persons, 
and not a cold and distant homage to abstract principles. 1 
§ 17. To return, in conclusion, to our original contrast 
of Oriental and Occidental modes of thought. Immersed 
in unconscious resignation to a spiritual, physical, or 
political unity, the Eastern rouses himself to reflection 
only to sink back into apathy, from a sense of impotence. 
The vague Pessimism which more or less strongly 
tinged their systems in very remote times, spread into 
Hellenic culture, and is revived to-day in reaction against 
hasty Optimism, — is the result of their power to criticise 
but not to alter. The illusion of freedom is all that 
separates us from the unreflecting happiness of animal life ; 
and the Sage cannot be consoled by the thought that his 
soul is part of the universal Divine essence. All mysticism, 
East or West, tends to diminish on close survey the part 
which is truly Divine ; passions, anger, practical impulses, 
virtues, discursive understanding, and at last reason itself 
and thought (tyikr) vorjais) are successively sacrificed as 
unworthy of this lofty origin ; and the single link is the 
mysterious point " Synderesis," just the background of 

1 It must be confessed that while philosophy in England has spoken forcibly 
in favour of this ultimate axiom, spontaneity, and has regarded with disapproval 
the extension of State control, German thinkers have, on the other hand, been 
too much enamoured of the whole to care for the parts. But the unification of 
Germany and the influence of Hegel, " last of the Schoolmen," will account just 
now for the prevalence of this Realism, which certainly will not last, in prejudice 
to the character and temperament of the nation. 

Germany (once the home of individuality, but owing to its long divorce from 
practical life, for a long period a nation of dreamers) speaks with mystical pride 
of such subordination of unit to whole, of detached fragment to whole mass, but 
it is akin to the whole temper and common sense of English philosophy, which 
here at least, in the department of positive Ethics, is entitled to credit both of 
originality and (compared to continental velleities) of a certain measure cf 
achievement. 



368 F. W. BUSSELL vn 

our thought, the unfathomable depth of our consciousness, 
which, even if it be the apex and throne of our being, can 
be reached only by ceasing to think as well as ceasing to 
act. Spinozism (and indeed all Monism) is the supreme 
achievement and the necessary goal of pure Reason, intent 
on the mysteries of life and compelled, by virtue of its 
own nature, to refuse all repose until it can rest or dissolve 
in a final and absolute vacuity. Mysticism, in the same 
way, whether pessimistic or devotional or merely physical, 
is the unfailing last term of such a survey, though it claims 
to be purely intellectual. From the Western point of 
view (which, I repeat, is only a prepossession of our mind, 
and cannot be explained or defended with complete 
success), " le Mysticisme c'est l'ennemi." Ethics, re- 
garded in the widest sense as the Science of the conduct 
of life in Society, cannot look with equanimity at the 
removal of all possible motive or stimulant to action. 
As it confronted with defiance the arbitrary decrees of 
Calvinism or the selfishness of a dissolute Court, so it 
finds its duty to-day in combating, in the interests of 
Practice, the tendencies of modern scientific, political, 
humanitarian, religious Unification. The result is the 
same in all such systems, whether the unity, of which we 
are transient and unimportant manifestations, be a natural 
Substance or a physical Law, or a Communistic State, or 
the Life of the Race, or in Idealism, a single Spirit behind 
the seeming variety of individual experience and thought. 
In the two extreme views we are either the result of the 
Law of substance, or the " organ of a reason " which is 
not our own. In neither case are we what we thought 
we were. But upon the prejudices and postulates of our 
genuinely different soul-life has been built the structure 
of European ethics and society, and we shall be obliged 
in the end to revert to that region of Faith, wherein lies 
the spring of benevolent activities, and desert the supposed 
discoveries of Pure Reason ; for therein lies stagnation 
and lethargy not merely of action but in the end of 
thought itself. 



VIII 
PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 

By H. Rashdall 

i. The Idealist position assumed. 

2. What is meant by the term ' Personality ' besides consciousness ? 

3. (a) A thinking, not merely a feeling, consciousness ; (t>) a certain per- 

manence. 

4. (c) The person distinguishes himself from the objects of his thought, 

{d) and from other selves : Individuality. 

5. (1?) The person has a will or is active. 

6. It is difficult to deny any of these characteristics in their most rudi- 

mentary form to the lowest or at least to the higher animal intelligences 
(cf. the case of children). Personality is a matter of degree. 

7. Morality might establish a sharper distinction, but it is impossible to 

pronounce absolutely where this begins. 

8. Yet these requirements are not fully satisfied even by man : human per- 

sonality is imperfect. If satisfied at all, they must be satisfied only by 
God. 

9. Belief in God assumed on idealistic grounds. Not merely a Universal 

Thinker but a Will. 

10. Objections to the idea of Personality in God. (a) ' No subject without 

an object ' ; but this does not necessarily imply that the objects from 
which the subject distinguishes himself are other than the changing 
states of himself, willed by himself. 

11. (d) A 'higher unity' is demanded; but this is unintelligible if it is 

meant that the distinction between subject and object is to be effaced. 

12. (c) Some deny that God is Will as well as Thought; but the idea of Causality 

includes final causality, and demands ' activity ' in the universal Mind. 

13. (d) The ascription of Personality to God does not (as may be objected) 

involve Pluralism or independent, unoriginated souls. 

14. (e) It is contended that God must be thought of as including finite spirits. 

This idea arises from the assumption that the principium individuationis 
of a being that exists for himself is the same as that of a thing which 
exists only for other. Our inability to distinguish between two minds 
whose content is identical does not prove that they are one and not two. 

1 5. Reality of the Self vindicated. God may know other selves without being 

such selves. 

16. How the knowledge of other selves, as they are for themselves, is possible. 

Confusion between the content of thought which is a universal, and there 
2 B 



370 H. RASHDALL vm 

fore ' common ' to many minds, and the actual thinking consciousness 
which thinks. 

17. Is God finite or infinite? 

18. The question of Time. 

19. God is not the Absolute. The Absolute is a society which includes God 

and all other spirits. 

§ 1. I PROPOSE in the present paper to inquire what is the 
real meaning of the term Personality, and then to ask in 
what sense that term may be applied firstly to individual 
human beings and then to God. 

In discussing a subject which really forms the apex as 
it were of the whole metaphysical pyramid, it is necessary 
to assume a good deal. One cannot begin at the bottom 
of the pyramid, but must assume that our foundations 
are already laid, and even that we are much nearer the 
top than the bottom of our theoretical structure. I shall 
assume in short the position of an Idealist. 1 I shall 
assume that we have followed and accepted the line of 
argument which goes to prove that there is no such thing 
as matter apart from mind, that what we commonly call 
things are not self-subsistent realities, but are only real 
when taken in their connection with mind — that they 
exist for mind, not for themselves. 

§ 2. If this position be accepted, it must carry with it, 
it would prima facie appear, the existence of the souls, 
spirits, or selves, which know or experience the things. 
I must not stay to meet the argument by which writers 
like Mr. Bradley attack the ascription of absolute reality 
to individual souls. Anything that I can say on that 
subject may be most fitly reserved for a later stage of the 
argument. I put aside for the present the question 
whether personality carries with it the idea of reality. 
Even by those who decline to consider persons as 
absolutely real, it is not denied that persons do in a sense 
exist. What is meant, then, by saying that persons exist ? 
What is the differentia of a person ? First and most 
obviously personality implies consciousness. The main 
question indeed that may be raised about Personality is 

1 I have attempted a very brief and popular outline of the idealistic creed, as 
I understand it, in its theological bearings in a recently published volume of 
essays entitled Conientio Veritatis, by Six Oxford Tutors. 



viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 371 

" What more besides consciousness is implied in it ? " 
Worms are commonly supposed to be conscious, but they 
are not ordinarily called persons. How does the mind 
of a man differ from that of a worm ? 

§ 3. (a) I suppose it will be universally admitted that 
a person is a thinking consciousness, not a merely feeling 
consciousness. Personality implies thought, not mere 
sensibility. 

(b) And this carries with it the further implication of a 
certain permanence. If such a thing as a purely feeling 
consciousness exists, its life must be supposed to consist in 
a succession of experiences, each of which only occupies 
consciousness when it is present, and is quite unconnected, 
for that being, with the consciousness of any other moment. 
The feeling of one moment might indeed produce effects 
which will alter or modify the feeling of another moment, 
but the consciousness of that second moment is not 
aware of this connection with preceding moments. A 
personal consciousness puts together and presents to itself 
and brings into relation with one another experiences of 
diverse moments. A certain degree of permanence is the 
second idea that we associate with personality. 

§ 4. (V) And this permanence of the consciousness 
amid changing experiences further carries with it another 
characteristic. The person distinguishes himself from the 
objects of his thought, although the ultimate esse of these 
objects must, if we are really faithful to idealism, be 
experiences actual or possible of that same consciousness 
or of some other consciousness. 

(d) Among these objects of thought which a person 
knows are, however, not merely things which exist for 
consciousness only, that is, exist for other (as the phrase 
is) but also other selves which are not known merely as 
objects for this person's thought, but as beings which 
exist for themselves. Many difficult and interesting 
questions may be raised about our knowledge of other 
minds, but these cannot be dealt with now. It is enough 
to say that the consciousness which is personal distinguishes 
itself from other consciousnesses and particularly from 



372 H. RASHDALL vni 

other persons. Individuality is an essential element in our 
idea of personality. 

| 5. (e) So far there will be perhaps little dispute. I 
am possibly asserting something less universally admitted 
when I say that the most essential of all attributes of 
personality has yet to be mentioned. The person is not 
merely a feeling but a willing or originating consciousness. 
The self is conscious of being an ap^rj ] — whether in the 
sense of the Libertarian or in the sense of the Determinist 
who believes in " self-determination," need not be discussed 
here. Of course, willing implies and is essentially con- 
nected with both thought and feeling, but it is not the 
same thing. There cannot be will without thought or 
feeling ; equally little can we form any distinct idea of 
what thought would be without will. For us at least 
there is no thought without attention : and attention is 
an act of the will. As Mr. Bosanquet puts it, " When- 
ever we are awake we are thinking, whenever we are 
awake we are willing." And the willing and the thinking 
are most intimately connected. Thought is an act, and 
we do not perform that act any more than any other act 
without a motive, and that implies feeling. 

Our idea of a person is then the idea of a consciousness 
which thinks, which has a certain permanence, which 
distinguishes itself from its own successive experiences 
and from all other consciousness — lastly, and most 
important of all, which acts. A person is a conscious, 
permanent, self-distinguishing, individual, active being. 

§ 6. What consciousnesses then possess personality ? 
It is generally admitted that human beings possess person- 
ality, if any. But what minds do not possess personality ? 
Most people would incontinently deny it to a worm, 
though they are fairly satisfied that worms have some 
kind of consciousness. And yet I confess I cannot attach 
"much meaning to the idea of a consciousness which feels 
but does not know at all — even for a second — what it 

1 For the defence of this proposition from the psychological point of view 
I may content myself with referring to Dr. Stout's "Analytical Psychology," 
passim. 



vin PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 373 

feels ; if it does know, however dimly, if its feeling has 
any content, here, it would seem, there must be rudimentary 
thought. Worms admittedly wriggle : if they have the 
slightest awareness of this wriggling, there would seem 
to be a rudimentary idea of space, though no doubt they 
are quite incapable of grasping the truth that space 
excludes enclosure by two straight lines. Again, feeling 
must occupy a certain time or it would not be feeling 
at all. An atomic " now " could not even be felt. Mere 
feeling by itself, therefore, would seem to imply a certain 
continuity of consciousness, a sense of transition from one 
feeling to another, a rudimentary permanence. 1 

And still more confidently may we assert that not 
even from the lowest forms of animal consciousness can 
we exclude the idea of impulse, activity, conation, as the 
psychologists call it. In his brilliant Gifford Lectures we 
even find Professor Ward sanctioning to some extent the 
attempt to make activity a more fundamental and earlier- 
developed characteristic of animal life than thought, and 
(to me more questionably) to attribute teleological activity, 
and with it apparently consciousness, to plant-life. What- 
ever may be thought of these speculations, animals at all 
events have impulses, and it is impossible to draw any 
sharp line between the type of impulse which we call 
instinct, in which we assume that there is no consciousness 
of the end aimed at, and the reflective resolution of the 
full-grown man who presents to himself a desired object 
and deliberately adopts it as his end. Without some 
consciousness — I will not say of an end but at least of 
the act towards which there is an impulse — even instinct 
would not be instinct, and between the blindest of instincts 
and the most deliberate of volitions there are probably 
impulses of every degree of reflectiveness. 

But whatever difficulties may be felt with regard to the 
worm or the jelly-fish, when we come to the higher animals 

1 " Every feeling of pleasure or of dislike, every kind of self-enjoyment, does in 
our view contain the primary basis of personality, that immediate self-existence 
which all later developments of self-consciousness may indeed make plainer to 
thought by contrasts and comparisons, thus also intensifying its value, but which 
is not in the first place produced by them." — Lotze, Microcosmus, Bk. ix. 
chap. iv. , E.T. ii. 679. 



374 H. RASHDALL vm 

at all events, it is clear to me that it is wholly arbitrary to 
deny to the higher animals in some rudimentary form 
each and every one of the characteristics which we have 
held to constitute Personality. And yet where shall we 
say that Personality begins ? It is impossible — in all 
probability with the amplest knowledge it would still be 
impossible — to say where personality begins in the evolu- 
tion of animal life, just as it is impossible to say where it 
begins in the life- history of the individual man. The 
newly born infant is no more of a person than a worm, 
except Svvd/jiei. Yet it is impossible at any period in the 
life of the child to say to it " To-day thou art a person ; 
yesterday thou wast not." Personality in short is a 
matter of degree. 

§ 7. We may no doubt find a more definite test of 
personality, if we add to our other differentia one which 
undoubtedly has a good right to be included in it, the 
capacity for Morality. Here we should have little diffi- 
culty in saying definitely that there are some types of 
consciousness which are below personality altogether. 
We may, indeed, see germs of Morality in the sociality 
of animals ; but we do not commonly consider Morality 
to begin till we reach the stage in which there is definite 
choice between conflicting impulses. In the lower animals 
it is commonly assumed that every impulse necessarily 
determines action while it is there, or until its place is 
taken by another, which then becomes similarly irresistible. 
But still it would be difficult to say that in the highest 
stages of animal life this dispossession of one impulse by 
another is effected entirely without comparison between 
the ideal satisfaction of the two impulses ; and it is diffi- 
cult to say at what point in the evolution either of the 
individual or of the race the choice between the conflicting 
impulses — between, for instance, a race-preserving action 
and a self-preserving one — becomes sufficiently deliberate 
to constitute Morality. If we place the beginning of 
Morality high, we must admit that there is something 
very like Morality below that limit. If we place it low, 
we shall have to admit that the germinal Morality of the 



viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 375 

savage is very unlike the developed Morality of the 
civilised adult. And even in civilised adults the capacity 
for Morality varies so enormously that it is quite an 
arguable position to maintain that in some men it is non- 
existent or wholly undeveloped. 

§ 8. There is no reason to believe that what we have 
laid down as the essential characteristics of personality 
are fully satisfied by any form of consciousness below the 
human, though to no consciousness can one deny some 
approximation to most of them. But are they fully 
satisfied even by the human Self? Certainly Socrates 
was more of a person than a savage. But does even 
Socrates fully satisfy the demands of personality ? Apply 
the test which discriminates the thinking consciousness 
from the merely sensitive consciousness. It is of the 
essence of the thinking consciousness that it should bind 
together the successive moments of experience, that it 
should look before and after, that it should know the past 
and the future as well as the present. Did Socrates know 
his own past — his own even, to say nothing of others' 
past — as well as he knew his present ? There is every 
reason to believe that Socrates had forgotten much of his 
early experience — some things probably (to avoid cavil) 
which he might have remembered with advantage. Large 
masses of his youthful experience had simply dropped 
out ; they were as little recognised by him as belonging 
to the same self of which he was now conscious as though 
they had been the experiences of some other person. This 
falls short of the perfect ideal of personality. Take the 
test of moral choice. Socrates had a rational will, pur- 
suing ends in which his Reason discerned value. But it 
would be too much to say that a passion for " scoring off" 
Sophists never mastered his judgment, and betrayed him 
into remarks which upon reflection even he himself would 
have recognised as not conducive to the discovery of truth 
or to the attainment of his own true good. Thus the most 
developed human consciousness seems to fall short of the 
ideal which every human consciousness suggests to us. 
An imperfect personality is the most that we can attribute 



376 H. RASHDALL vm 

even to the most richly endowed of human souls. If a 
person ru> aKpi^eo-rdrw \6<ya) is to exist, such personality 
must be found not in man but in some superior being — 
as far as our knowledge goes, only, if at all, in God. 

8 9. But does any such consciousness as is commonly 
understood to be implied by the term God really exist ? 
Here once more I must assume an argument which I 
have not leisure to develop. I must assume that my 
readers are familiar with the argument by which Idealists 
lead up to this idea of a Universal Self- consciousness. 
The world, as Idealism holds itself to have proved, must 
exist in a mind. Yet if Science is to be justified, it is 
clear that its only esse cannot be in such minds as our own. 
My own Reason, making inferences from my own ex- 
perience, assures me that the world was when I was not — 
when no human or sub-human ancestor of mine was there 
to contemplate the molten planet or the contracting nebula. 
I cannot understand my present experience without making 
that assumption. There must then have been a conscious- 
ness for which the world always existed. The very fact 
that I know there are things which I do not know, and 
that what I know I know but imperfectly, proves the 
existence of a Universal Knower if to be (when applied 
to a thing) = to be experienced. Idealism then proves 
the existence of a Universal Thinker. And analogy 
would lead us to believe that we must attribute to the 
Universal Thinker in perfection all those characteristics 
which are implied by Personality, and which yet no 
human person ever completely satisfied. Just the same 
line of thought which infers that God knows perfectly the 
world which we know imperfectly points to the belief that 
He possesses perfectly the personality which we possess 
imperfectly — that He is a being who thinks, who persists 
throughout his successive experiences, who knows those 
past experiences as well as the present, who distinguishes 
Himself from the objects of his thought, who in particular 
distinguishes Himself from all other consciousnesses, and, 
finally, who wills, and wills in accordance with the con- 
ception of an ideal end or good. I need hardly discuss 



vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE ^77 

elaborately what God wills : by any one who admits the 
idea of volition into his own conception of God at all it 
will hardly be questioned that, if God wills, He must will 
all, or at least (let us say for the present) everything that 
is not willed by some lesser will. We are conscious of 
objects which we know and will, and of others which we 
know but do not will. God must will the object of his 
own thought — i.e. the world. 

§ io. Why is the conception of Personality in God such 
a stumbling-block ? Fully to state and meet these objec- 
tions would be a Philosophy. I can only aim at suggest- 
ing the bare headings (as it were) of some chapters which 
such a Philosophy would contain. 

{a) The first head of objection runs thus. To think 
of God simply as a spirit or soul or self, distinguishable 
from the world, is to forget that the human self knows 
itself only at the same time and by the same act wherein 
it knows the not-self. A self which knows nothing is a 
mere abstraction. God therefore must not be thought of 
as apart from the world. The world is as necessary to 
God as God is to the world. I should quite admit that 
the divine, like the human, Thinker must think objects : 
but then I should contend that these objects must not be 
understood as anything existing independently of the 
knowing Ego. The self must distinguish itself from 
something ; but that something need only be the changing 
states of itself. 1 Further, I should insist that all these 
experiences or objects of the divine thought must be 
conceived of as willed, no less than thought, and therefore 
are not to be distinguished from God's own being in the 
way in which the involuntary and often painful experiences 
of ourselves have to be distinguished from the self which 
knows them. To think of the world (with some Idealists) 
as though it were an eternal complement to God — a sort 
of Siamese twin to which He is eternally and inseparably 
annexed but which is something other than the content of 



1 I am dealing here only with the world of things. Objections might no 
doubt be raised to the idea of a Universe in which one Self and his thoughts 
were the sole Reality. 



378 H. RASHDALL vm 

his Will — is to forget our Idealism, and still more to forget 
our " Monism." The Dualism is no less Dualism because 
we are told that the subject is as necessary to the object 
as the object to the subject, if the object be thought of 
as something which exists quite independently of being 
willed by the Mind which is compelled to know it but 
which may yet (for anything that such a Philosophy has 
to say to the contrary) be constrained to pronounce it 
very bad. Such a view is none the less Dualism because 
the object is understood to be an " object of thought " 
and not the " matter " of the materialist. To say that 
the subject is necessary to the object does not get rid 
of the two principles : Ahriman was, I suppose, in the 
Zoroastrian Philosophy regarded as necessary to Ormuzd. 
Such a mode of thought really ends (as many of Green's 
disciples have shown) in a naturalism which for all practical 
purposes is indistinguishable from materialism. When 
God ceases to be thought of as active power, He soon 
comes to be regarded as merely an abstraction : if He is 
still spoken of as " thought," that is merely an abstract 
way of representing all the true thought of all the indi- 
vidual thinkers in the Universe as if they were all held 
together in a system by an actual consciousness. How- 
ever abhorrent this tendency would have been to the 
essentially religious mind of such a man as Green, that is 
the natural development of a Philosophy which really 
banishes the idea of activity not merely from its idea of 
God but in truth from its conception of the Universe 
as a whole. 

§ i i. (b) But some will insist, not merely that God 
must have a world to know, but that neither God nor the 
world, nor the two taken together, can be regarded as the 
Absolute being. God -j- His thoughts, Subject + object 
does not satisfy our demand for Unity. The Absolute 
must be both subject and object. It must be that which 
it knows. It must " transcend " the distinction between 
subject and object. It must be both at once or a third 
thing that is neither. To this I answer : " If all that is 
meant is that what God knows (putting aside for the 



vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 379 

present other spirits and their experiences) must be in a 
sense part of Himself, within His own being, I admit that 
that is so (if what He thinks is also what He wills) but 
I should contend that such an admission does not get 
rid of the distinction between subject and object, nor is 
it inconsistent with personality. If what is meant is that 
there is a kind of third being unlike the only two kinds 
of being which we have any reason to believe in — neither 
thinker nor thought, neither subject nor object, neither 
that which exists for self nor that which exists for other, 
I answer that the supposition is wholly gratuitous : and 
that it is, indeed, one to which no real meaning can be 
attached. It is open to all the objections which have 
been so copiously hurled at the Kantian ' Noumena,' at 
the Spencerian ' Unknowable,' at the crude ' matter ' of 
the ' naive Realist' We don't really solve difficulties by 
chucking contradictions l into the Absolute and saying 
1 Be ye reconciled there, for we are quite sure ye cannot 
be reconciled here.' Mr. Bradley's Philosophy of the 
Absolute, however brilliant his genius, however invaluable 
the stimulus which he has given to metaphysical thought 
in the attempt to construct it, is (I venture to suggest) an 
attempt to fuse two wholly contradictory and irreconcil- 
able lines of thought — the idealistic and the Spinozistic. 
The idea that thought (or thinker) can be an attribute or 
adjective of something which is neither thought nor 
thinker, is wholly inadmissible to one who sees, as clearly 
as does Mr. Bradley, that nothing exists but experience. 

§ 1 2. (c) It is objected that we have no right to attribute 
the idea of will to God. Of course there is much in our 
experience of volition which belongs to our limitations — 
sometimes even to our animal organisms. There is some- 
times a disposition to find the essence of will in the sense 
of effort — a mere matter of muscular sensation. But that 
is not of the essence of will. Our volition (as we know 
it) is the only experience which enables us to give concrete 
embodiment to the purely a priori conception of Causality, 
which includes both final cause and efficient cause. We 

1 Not that in this case there is any real contradiction. 



380 H. RASHDALL vm 

know why a thing happened when we know (i) that it 
realised an end which Reason pronounces to have value, 
and (2) what was the force or (knowing all the abuses to 
which that word is liable), I will say, the real being which 
turned that end from a mere idea into an actuality, i.e. 
the actual experience of some soul. Doubtless my 
definition involves a circle : for Causality or activity is 
an ultimate category which cannot be defined. If Idealism 
be true, this force or active reality must be some kind of 
conscious being : such an active consciousness as we are 
aware of in ourselves will supply us with at least some- 
thing more than a merely symbolical expression for the 
union of force or power or activity with a consciously 
apprehended end. Even apart from this argument from 
Causality, the mere fact that mind, as we know it, is 
always will as well as thought, would be a sufficient ground 
for inferring by analogy that, if God be the supreme 
source of being or Mind, He too must be Will no less 
than Thought. 

§13. id) The idealistic argument, as here stated or rather 
presupposed, leads us up to a view of the Universe which 
finds all reality in souls and their experiences. It remains 
to ask what is the relation between these souls or spirits. 
To account for the world as a mere object of knowledge, 
we have found it necessary to regard one of these spirits, 
God, as omniscient and eternal, and therefore as sui 
generis, incomparably superior to human intelligences with 
their partial and limited knowledge and still more limited 
capacities of action. We have found it necessary, more- 
over, to regard Him as causative — as causing those ex- 
periences of the other souls of which their own wills are 
not the cause, and (since no human will is ever the whole 
cause of anything) as co-operating in some sense with 
whatever causality is exercised by human wills. What, 
then, are we to say as to the relation between the supreme 
volitional Intelligence and other volitional intelligences ? 
Many will be disposed to think that the course of my 
argument points in the direction of Pluralism — to the 
hypothesis of many independent, underived intelligences, 



vm PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 381 

coeternal and uncreated. I have no a priori objection 
or prejudice whatever against such a view if there were 
sufficient grounds for postulating it. But I do not think 
that our argument necessitates any such consequence. In 
the first place Pluralism fails to account for the unity of 
the world, not merely for the experienced uniformity of 
nature (which is a postulate of Science but no necessity 
of thought) but for the mere fact of the likeness 
between different minds, the fact that we all think 
in the same categories, etc. This might, indeed, be 
regarded as an ultimate fact which cannot be 
accounted for, but it tends to make the unity of the 
world not only hard to account for but hard to understand. 
In the second place, our souls in all their experiences are 
dependent upon modifications of a bodily organism which 
from our point of view must be regarded as due to the 
thought and will of God : the dependence upon God of 
the bodily organism carries with it the dependence upon 
Him also of the spirits to which such bodies are organic. 
To suppose the souls independent of God would involve 
(as it seems to me) either the monstrous idea of a purely 
casual coincidence between the retreating brow and the 
limited intelligence or a no less appalling and arbitrary 
scheme of pre-established harmony. And thirdly, the 
whole contrast between the known limits of human 
knowledge and the inferred Omniscience of God prepares 
us by analogy for a corresponding contrast between an 
eternal or unoriginated mind and minds which are 
originated and dependent. The mind whose knowledge 
is partial and progressive may well have a beginning. 
Experience gives us no evidence for pre-existence, and we 
are not justified in going beyond experience except in so 
far as is necessary to explain experience. Moreover, pre- 
existence is a hypothesis which presupposes the waters of 
Lethe or some similar Mythology. 1 I infer, then, that the 
human mind, like all minds, is derived from the one 
supreme Mind. As attempts to express this relation, I 

1 I do not mean that such a conception is impossible or absurd, but that it is 
gratuitous. 



382 H. RASHDALL vm 

have no objection to the fashionable phrases " partial 
communication to us of the divine thought," " partial 
reproduction of the divine consciousness," " limited modes 
of the universal self-consciousness," " emanations from the 
divine Mind," and so on, provided they are not used to 
evade the admission that the fact of such reproductions 
occurring must be regarded as no less due to the divine 
will than the first appearance and the gradual development 
of the bodily organism by which those reproductions are 
conditioned. But I do not know that such expressions 
are any improvement upon the old biblical phrase that 
man was created by God in his own image and after his 
own likeness. 

§14. (e) Leaving the question of origin, how are we 
to conceive the relation between God and man when the 
latter is once in being ? Having repudiated the pluralistic 
tendency to make other souls independent of God, I must 
go on to justify Pluralism as against Monism in its view 
of the separateness and distinctness of the individual self- 
consciousness from God when once in existence and so 
long as it exists. The argument by which Monism makes 
the human soul (in some one of innumerable different 
meanings or shades of meaning) a part or an element of, 
or aspect of, and therefore in some sense as identical with 
the Divine, seems to me to be grounded upon one supreme 
fallacy. I detect that fallacy in almost every line of 
almost every Hegelian thinker (if I may say so with all 
respect) whom I have read, 1 and of many who object 
to that designation. That fallacy is the assumption 
that what constitutes existence for others is the same 
as what constitutes existence for self. 2 A thing is as 

1 Of course this does not apply to the individualistic Hegelianism of Mr. 
McTaggart which he has shown strong reason for believing was the Hegelianism 
of Hegel. 

2 This charge could, I believe, be illustrated over and over again out of 
Professor Royce's The World and the Individual, the ablest attempt yet made 
to think out the theory of a common Consciousness including individual selves. 
The confusion is fostered by the author's tendency to speak of the self as a 
" meaning." " I, the individual, am what I am by virtue of the fact that my 
intention, my meaning, my wish, my desire, my hope, my life, stand in contrast 
to those of any other individual " (loc. cit. p. 426). Here it is not clear whether 
' the meaning ' implies the meaning as forming the content of knowledge or the 



vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 383 

it is known : its esse is to be known : what it is for the 
experience of spirits, is its whole reality : it is that 
and nothing more. But the esse of a person is to know 
himself, to be for himself, to feel and to think for himself, 
to act on his own knowledge, and to know that he acts. 
In dealing with persons, therefore, there is an unfathom- 
able gulf between knowledge and reality. What a person 
is for himself is entirely unaffected by what he is for any 
other, so long as he does not know what he is for that 
other. No knowledge of that person by another, however 
intimate, can ever efface the distinction between the mind 
as it is for itself, and the mind as it is for another. The 
essence of a person is not what he is for another, but what 
he is for himself. It is there that his principium individua- 
tionis is to be found — in what he is, when looked at from 
the inside. All the fallacies of our anti- individualist 
thinkers come from talking as though the essence of a 
person lay in what can be known about him, and not in 
his own knowledge, his own experience of himself. And 
that, in turn, arises largely from the assumption that 
knowledge, without feeling or will, is the whole of Reality. 
Of course, I do not mean to deny that a man is made 
what he is (in part) by his relations to other persons, 
but no knowledge of these relations by any other than 
himself is a knowledge which can constitute what he is 
to himself. However much I know of another man, and 
however much by the likeness of my own experience, 
by the acuteness of the interpretation which I put upon 
his acts and words, by the sympathy which I feel for 
him — I may know of another's inner life, that life is for 

-meaning as forming part of the individual's consciousness. If the former, there 
is nothing intrinsically absurd in the supposition that two individuals should have 
exactly the same meaning, and yet remain two. Or if they do not, there is no 
difference between them, and the (even apparent) individuality of the individual 
self disappears. In the latter case there will be as many meanings as there are 
selves, no matter how much alike they may be. Professor Royce seems habitually 
to ignore exactly the differentia of Consciousness. He constantly assumes that 
to be in relation with another being is to be identical with that being (just as a 
thing undoubtedly is constituted by its relations), that the individuality of the self 
differs in nothing from the individuality of a star [I.e. p. 432), that the individuality 
of the self lies in what it is for God. (" The self is in itself real. It possesses 
individuality. And it possesses this individuality, as we have seen, in God and 
for God," I.e. p. 433.) 



384 H. RASHDALL vin 

ever a thing quite distinct from me the knower of it. 1 
My toothache is for ever my toothache only, 2 and can 
never become yours ; and so is my love for another 
person, however passionately I may desire — to use that 
metaphor of poets and rhetoricians which imposes upon 
mystics, and even upon philosophers — to become one with 
the object of my love : for that love would cease to be if 
the aspiration were literally fulfilled. If per impossibile 
two disembodied spirits, or selves, were to go through 
exactly the same experiences — knew, felt, and willed 
always alike — still they would be two, and not one. 3 The 
fact that we should not be able to say anything about 
the difference could not alter the fact ; for with persons 
(once again) what they are for the knowledge of others 
does not constitute the whole of their reality. But each 
of them would know the difference between his own ex- 
perience and his knowledge of the other's experience ; 
and each of us, being a separate self, would know that 
each of these two must know it, but we could not know 
what it is except in so far as each of us might know that 

1 I cannot here further analyse how we obtain this knowledge. 

2 Mr. Bradley contends that the Absolute may feel all our pains and yet not 
feel them as pain (like the discord in Music which only increases the harmony), 
but then / do feel it as pain. Could any defence give away the case more hope- 
lessly, or show more convincingly that I feel something which is not the Absolute's 
feeling ? 

3 If this is not self-evident, let me add the following argument. It is admitted 
that two such spirits might have like but not identical experiences {i.e. experience 
in which there was some identity but some difference) without ceasing to be two. 
Let us suppose the content of the consciousness of each to become gradually 
more and more like that of the other, including all the time the knowledge of the 
other's existence. Can it be seriously contended that as the last remaining differ- 
ence disappeared, that consciousness in A of not being B would suddenly disappear 
too ? Of course it may be said that the consciousness of not being B is part of 
the content of A's consciousness. If so, of course the case supposed could not 
possibly arise, and the difficulty disappears. But still the difference between A 
and B would be absolutely unrecognisable and indescribable for any other con- 
sciousness, although such a consciousness might know that there were two beings 
with such contents of consciousness identical but for the knowledge by each that 
he was not the other. Or again let me take the case of two consciousnesses not 
knowing of each other's existence, but having (as a third mind is aware) nearly 
identical experiences. Let us suppose two very elementary minds, whose ex- 
perience should be confined as nearly as is possible to present sensation. Let 
us suppose the pain they suffer to become more and more alike. Will it be 
gravely said that if for a moment the throbs which filled each consciousness 
became the same {i.e. same in content, as known but not felt by the third mind), 
that mind would have to pronounce that there were two throbs no longer, but 
only one? 



viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 385 

it is like, or analogous to, the difference between what he 
is for himself, and what he knows of the self that seems 
to be likest him. 

§15. Mr. Bradley's objections to ascribing reality to the 
Self really, I venture to think, spring in great part from the 
same root. That the self includes the not-self as known to 
me is true enough. So long as the "not-self" is a mere 
thing, it has no reality apart from what it is to me and 
other selves. What it is for me, is in a sense part of me. 
When the not-self is a person, the knowledge of that self 
is part of my experience, and so (if you like it) in a sense 
part of me ; but that does not show that there is not a 
something which he is for himself, which is no part at 
all of me, and which is as real as I am. In so far as 
I know what he is in his own self-knowledge, of course 
there is an identity between what he is for me (part of 
my ego) and what he is for himself (part of his ego), but 
this identity is a mere abstraction, the identity of a Uni- 
versal. Mr. Bradley cannot usually be accused of mistak- 
ing such abstractions for reality. Of course if " real " is 
to mean "out of all relation to anything outside itself," 
then it is obvious on the face of it — without 500 pages 
of argument — that nothing can be real except the whole. 
But that is not the usual sense of " real," and if the words 
be used in other than their usual sense, Mr. Bradley's 
paradoxes sink into something not so very far removed 
from platitudes. Undoubtedly the self is not what it is 
apart from its relations to other selves ; but, unless those 
relations to other selves as they are for other are the whole 
of its being, the self may be real without being the whole 
of Reality. It is only in the case of a thing that its 
relations to some other mind as known to that other con- 
stitute the whole of its reality. If "reality" be taken to 
mean self-sufficing reality, a being underived from and 
independent of all other beings, we may admit that such 
reality cannot be ascribed to the finite self, and can only 
be ascribed to the whole — to the whole kingdom of selves 
taken in their relation to one another and to God, who is 
one of the selves and the source of them. We do not 

2 c 



386 H. RASHDALL vm 

get to any fuller or deeper Reality by supposing an 
existence in which God or the Absolute no longer dis- 
tinguishes himself from the selves, or the selves from 
God. Without any such unintelligible confusion there will 
remain a very real sense in which the being of the 
originated souls may be regarded as derived from, and 
even if you like, therefore, in the sense of forming objects 
of the divine thought, included in the Divine Being. But 
if we use such language, we must make it plain that the 
knowledge of the finite self by God does not exhaust its 
being as is the case with the mere object. It is the 
knowledge of them that is in God. God must know the 
self as a self which has a consciousness, an experience, 
a will which is its own — that is, as a being which is not 
identical with the knowledge that He has of it. 

In short, all the conclusions which are applicable to 
each particular self in his relation to another seem to be 
equally applicable to the relations between God and any 
other Spirit. Undoubtedly God may, must have an 
infinitely deeper and completer knowledge of every one 
of us than any one of us has of another — nay, a pro- 
founder knowledge of each of us than each of us has of 
himself, for each of us forgets ; each of us knows his past 
self only by means of abstractions — abstract generalities 
which (as Mr. Bradley has taught us) are so far off from 
the realities — the half-remembered half-forgotten colour 
or sound, joy or sorrow which they symbolise ; still less 
does he know all his yet unrealised capacities or poten- 
tialities. Each of us is but imperfectly personal. God alone 
(as Lotze maintained) fully realises the ideal of person- 
ality ; and that higher personality — that complete know- 
ledge of self- — must carry with it much more knowledge 
of other selves than to us is possible. How God knows 
what I feel without having actually felt the like, I do not 
know: but there is nothing in the supposition so inherently 
self-contradictory as there is in the idea that God feels what 
I feel at this moment and yet that there is only one feeling 
at this moment and not two. The only analogy that 
seems available is the fact that I can know what I once 



vin PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 387 

felt, though I feel it no longer. Doubtless God cannot be 
thought of as attaining his knowledge of other selves by 
the clumsy processes of inference or analogy by which 
we so imperfectly enter into the consciousness of others : 
doubtless pleasure, pain, colour, sound, volition must be 
in God something different from what they are to us. 
And yet even for God such a knowledge of other selves 
must be in some way dependent upon a likeness (i.e. 
partial identity of content) between his experience and 
ours. God must be thought of as feeling pleasure — yes, 
and (as far as I see) pain also, or something like pain, 
as loving persons and hating evil, as willing the good 
and so on. Say, if you will, that such terms applied to 
God are mere symbols. But then so (I should contend), 
in a sense, is " thought." God's thought can as little be 
exactly what our thought is as our joys and sorrows can 
be exactly what his are. Yet imperfect knowledge is 
still knowledge, or we should have to confess that we 
know nothing at all. And it is arbitrary out of the 
three distinguishable but inseparable and mutually 
dependent aspects or activities of self-conscious being 
as known to us — will, thought, feeling — to select one, 
namely thought (which by itself is a mere abstraction), 
and to call that God. I need not further insist on the 
arbitrariness of this procedure : the imperishable value 
of Mr. Bradley's " Appearance and Reality " lies largely 
in its exposure of it. God, if He is to be known at all, must 
be known as a Trinity — Potentia, Sapientia, Bonitas or 
Voluntas, as the Schoolmen (in this matter so much more 
rational and intelligible than later theologians) consistently 
maintained. 1 God must then, it would seem, know other 
selves by the. analogy of what He is Himself ; He could 
not (it is reasonable to infer) have created beings wholly 
unlike Himself. His knowledge of other selves may be 
perfect knowledge without his ever being or becoming 
the selves which He knows. His being must, if this is 

1 I only suggest an analogy between the traditional doctrine in its scholastic 
and philosophical form and that which I suggest. To make them identical, we 
must take Potentia to = Will, and include the element of feelinsf in Bonitas. 



388 H. RASHDALL vni 

all that you mean by the phrase, " penetrate " their inmost 
being. But to talk of one self-conscious being including 
or containing in himself or being identical with other 
selves is to use language which is (as it appears to me) 
wholly meaningless and self-contradictory, for the essence 
of being a self is to distinguish oneself from other selves. 
Such theories are just one instance of that all-fertile source 
of philosophical error — the misapplication of spacial meta- 
phors. Minds are not Chinese boxes which can be put 
' inside ' one another. And if it be answered that the 
higher Unity that is to transcend the difference between 
God and other selves, between selves and things, must 
therefore not be a self, I answer that we know of no form 
of ultimately real being except the self. To talk of other 
" beings " which are not selves is as unmeaning as to talk 
about beings which do not exist. That being which is 
noX. for a self is a self; and it is only in a restricted and 
popular and not in a strictly philosophical sense that 'being' 
can be attributed to that which merely is for other. The 
real is that which is for itself, and every spirit or con- 
sciousness (in its measure and degree) is for itself. 

§ 1 6. Is the question raised "How can one Self know 
another self not merely as it is for other but as it is for 
itself?" It might be enough to plead that the difficulty is 
not made one whit less difficult by the theory of a universal 
Consciousness which includes all particular selves. Even 
if this theory helped to explain how the Universal 
self knows the particular self and the particular self the 
Universal self, it would not explain how one particular 
self knows another particular self. You may say that 
each particular self really is each other particular self, and 
is therefore inside it and not outside it. But then how 
does one self appear to be outside the other ? Where is 
the distinction between them ? And why does not one 
self not know all about each and every other self as it 
is for itself? I cannot really profess much sympathy 
with the supposed difficulty about explaining how we 
know other Selves. It seems to me an ultimate part of 
our experience that from our self-knowledge we do by 



viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 389 

inference infer the existence of other selves which are for 
themselves as well as for us ; and Philosophy has nothing 
to do but to record and systematise the way we actually 
think. In my thought the idea of a being which is for 
itself as well as for me is quite clearly distinguishable 
from that of a being which is only for me. The fact that 
I think it, is the only possible argument to show that it 
can be thought. Of course it is possible to deny the 
validity of the inferences by which I reach this result. 
I do not propose to discuss this question further, but will 
only say that Solipsism can be made just as plausible 
from one philosophical point of view as from another : 
like Scepticism it admits of no decisive refutation, but 
carries no conviction. The only philosophies that can 
justly be taunted with a tendency towards Solipsism are 
the systems which fail to distinguish between know- 
ledge and other aspects of being, especially feeling ; and 
under this category may be placed not only the Sensation- 
alism which merges knowledge in feeling, but also the 
Intellectualism which merges feeling in knowledge. If I 
cannot distinguish between my feeling and my knowledge 
that I feel, naturally I cannot know that another feels ; 
and when we have abstracted from my total consciousness 
the feeling -element, the knowledge -element taken by 
itself can be very plausibly identified with the mere 
abstract content of knowledge, which is no doubt 
precisely the same for any number of Selves who think 
the same thing, and therefore the same for God and for 
the other minds whom God knows but is not. It may be 
plausibly identified with it, but it is not really the same 
thing. For there will still remain the difference between 
the content of my knowledge and the actual knowing 
consciousness. The knowledge taken apart from the 
feeling and the willing is no doubt an abstraction ; it is 
only an aspect of the single Ego that feels, wills, and 
knows. The confusion has arisen largely from the 
ambiguity of the word "thought." Thought may mean 
" the content that is thought," or it may mean " the 
consciousness which thinks." The content of two people's 



390 H. RASHDALL vin 

thought may be the same : but the consciousness that 
thinks in the two cases is different. Every experience as 
such is unique : the content abstracted from the experi- 
ence itself is always a universal, and may therefore be 
common to any number of such experiences as well as to 
minds which share the knowledge without having had 
similar experiences. 1 And it is not only the content of 
another's experience that I can know, but the fact that 
there is a real self which has that experience. Even in 
the case of selves with precisely similar experiences, I 
can know that there were one, two, or more of such 
beings. But it is not my knowledge of each self that 
makes it a self; neither does my inability to recognise 
any but a numerical difference between them telescope 
them into one. The difficulty has been largely manu- 
factured by the habit of philosophers of speaking of all 
that I know as a " non-ego " without taking any account 
of the difference between the " non-ego " which is an 
" ego " and the " non-ego " which is only what I or other 
minds know about it. 

§17. Do you say that all this makes God finite ? Be it 
so, if you will. Everything that is real is in that sense 
finite. God is certainly limited by all other beings in the 
Universe, that is to say, by other selves, in so far as He 
is not those selves. He is not limited, as I hold, by 
anything which does not ultimately proceed from his own 
Nature or Will or Power. That power is doubtless 
limited, and in the frank recognition of this limitation of 

3 Often of course, as Mr. Bradley has shown so impressively, this generalised 
content reproduces or represents but very imperfectly the actual experience — even 
in the case of the thinker's own past experiences. That is particularly of course 
with pleasures and pains, the memory of which is not necessarily pleasant or 
painful at all. Yet it is an exaggeration to say that we cannot know in any 
degree what a past pleasure or pain was like, and equally so that we know nothing 
of what other people's pleasures and pains are to them. Pleasure and pain them- 
selves belong to the uniqueness of consciousness : their generalised content may 
be known to many minds, and the fact that no pleasure necessarily enters into the 
idea of a pleasure, and that (still more certainly) no pain into the idea of a pain is 
an impressive exhibition of the difference between knowledge and reality. The 
champions of an inclusive consciousness have never found a difficulty in the 
uniqueness of two exactly similar experiences of the same person (experiences of 
which the content is the same) because of the difference in the time-relations of 
the two : but there is nothing in the nature of time to exclude the simultaneous 
existence of two or more unique experiences. 



vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 391 

power lies the only solution of the problem of Evil which 
does not either destroy the goodness of God or destroy 
moral distinctions altogether. He is limited by his own 
eternal, if you like " necessary " nature — a nature which 
wills eternally the best which that nature has in it to 
create. The limitation is therefore what Theologians have 
often called a self-limitation : provided only that this limita- 
tion must not be regarded as an arbitrary self-limitation, 
but as arising from the presence of that idea of the best 
that is eternally present to a will whose potentialities are 
limited — that idea of the best which to Platonising 
Fathers and Schoolmen became the Second Person of the 
Holy Trinity. The truth of the world is then neither 
Monism, in the pantheising sense of the word, nor 
Pluralism : the world is neither a single Being, nor many 
co-ordinate and independent Beings, but a One Mind who 
gives rise to many. We may of course, if we choose, 
describe the whole collection of these beings as One 
Reality, with enough capital letters to express the unction 
which that numeral appears to carry with it for some 
minds ; but after all the Reality, whether eternally or 
only at one particular stage of its development, is a 
community of Persons. 

§ 1 8. The embarrassment of my language at this point 
will make it plain that I am getting myself entangled 
in another question more difficult, and more momentous 
even in its ultimate implications, than the question of 
Personality — that is, the question of Time. Is Time 
objective or subjective ? Is the Absolute in time, or is 
time in the Absolute ? A hasty or unconsidered treat- 
ment of such questions would be useless. I have 
endeavoured, while assuming that the individual self 
is in time, to avoid language which is necessarily in- 
consistent with the position that God is " out of time." 
I will only add here that a full investigation of this 
question might lead us to the conclusion, that, just as we 
have seen reason to insist that any sense in which the 
divine knowledge penetrates the individual consciousness 
must be a sense which leaves to the individual his full 



392 H. RASHDALL vm 

individuality, personality, reality, so any sense in which 
we might find it necessary to admit that the divine 
knowledge transcends the distinctions of past, present, 
and future, any sense in which God is (to use the 
medieval expression) supra tempus must be a sense which 
is compatible with leaving to the time-consciousness in 
which individuals undoubtedly live, true reality likewise, 
though there may and must undoubtedly be aspects of 
this reality which we do not fully understand. 

§ 19. The indisposition to admit that souls have an 
existence which is not merged in that of God, seems to 
arise largely from the fact that philosophers have imposed 
upon themselves and others by the trick of simply assuming 
(without proof) an identity between God and the philo- 
sophical " Absolute," and then arguing that if any of the 
attributes ascribed by theology or religion or common- 
sense to God are inconsistent with what is implied in the 
conception of " the Absolute," no such being as the God 
of Religion can exist. Personality is undoubtedly incon- 
sistent with the idea of the Absolute or Infinite Being, 
and therefore it is assumed that God is not personal. 
The arguments of Idealism really, as it seems to me, go 
to prove that over and above our souls there does exist 
such a Being as Theologians, except when they have 
unintelligently aped the language of philosophies not 
their own, have commonly understood by God. The 
Absolute, therefore, if we must have a phrase which 
might well be dispensed with, consists of God and the 
souls, including, of course, all that God and those souls 
know or experience. The Absolute is not a simple 
aggregate formed of these spirits, as each of them is if 
taken apart from the rest, but a society in which each 
must be taken with all its relations to the rest — as being 
what it is for itself together with what it is for other. 
This leaves quite open the question what is the nature 
of those relations. It will be quite as true that ' the 
Absolute is a society ' in our view as it is in the view of 
the Pluralists who make souls coeternal with God, or as 
in the view of Mr. McTaggart, who makes Reality consist 



viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 393 

of eternal souls without God. 1 Only in our view God 
at a certain point of time caused the souls to exist ; or 
(if we please) by an eternal act causes that at a certain 
time they shall appear in the time-series. The Absolute, 
we may say, becomes a Society ; or, if we like to think 
of everything that is to be as having an existence already 
in some sense in the Absolute, we may say that the 
Absolute eternally is a God who persists throughout time 
(or, if it be so, a God who is supra teinpus) together with 
selves who are eternally present to the mind of God, but 
who begin to have their real being, in accordance with 
His will, at particular moments of time. 

1 I have very much sympathy with Mr. McTaggart's criticism of the usual 
Hegelian idea of God as a consciousness including other consciousnesses. (See 
especially Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, pp. 60, 61.) I must not attempt to 
examine his position now, but will briefly indicate where it seems to me defective. 
Besides all the difficulties involved in the idea of pre-existent souls, it is open to 
this objection. Mr. McTaggart (whatever we may say of the " Pluralists ") feels 
that the world must be a Unity, that it consists not merely of souls but of related 
and interconnected souls which form a system. But a system for whom ? The 
idea of a system which is not " for " any mind at all is not open to an Idealist ; 
and the idea of a world each part of which is known to some mind but is not 
known as a whole to any one mind is almost equally difficult. Where then, in 
his view, is the Mind that knows the whole, i.e. the whole system of souls with 
the content of each ? The difficulty could only be met by making out that each 
soul is omniscient, and perhaps this is really Mr. McTaggart's meaning. If so, 
the difficulty of making each soul as an extra-temporal reality omniscient, while 
as occupying a position in the time-series it is all the time ignorant of much, is one 
which needs no pointing out. In short, I hold that the ordinary idealistical 
arguments for a Mind which knows and wills the whole are not invalidated by 
Mr. McTaggart's criticism ; while I can only cordially accept his extraordinarily 
able and convincing criticism of the position that the supreme mind is the whole. 



THE END 



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